New Horror Books

https://amzn.to/43rT8D0

(Ferris wheel pupil in a burning eye with hot pink on teal and tall yellow text - the cover tells us nothing but to expect the bizarre.)

It is the summer of ‘97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.

Enter the Freakslaw―a travelling carnival of deviant queers and architects of mayhem. There’s Gloria, fortune teller and worm charmer; her daughter Nancy, a contortionist witch; big-hearted tightrope walker, Werewolf Louie; not to mention illusionists and conjoined twins, Cass and Henry, and tattooed human pincushion, the Pin Gal. Against Pitlaw’s miserably grey landscape, the carnival shines electric and bright, and it doesn’t take long for the town’s teenagers to be seduced by its neon charms and the possibility of escape.

https://amzn.to/4kooXCQ

(Not a fan of the yellow text this time around, but love the braided hair with rose thorns sticking out of it. It looks like a physically crafted editorial, it is so well done.)

Touch a line, you break your spine.

Stacey is the dusty air, the cracked soil, the drought. To thirteen-year-old Bethany Sloane, she’s everything.

Abandoned by her mother at a remote African boarding school, Bethany will do anything to stay in Stacey’s good graces. And that means learning the rules of each twisted game.

Touch a crack, you break your back.

Years later, Bethany is a bestselling author. Disabled now, she can’t remember what happened back in the bush. But there’s no mistaking Stacey Preston’s name in her inbox.

Glassy, glassy, cut my arsey.

That email brings Bethany’s childhood rushing back. The Glass Man was just a story the Thorns invented, a game of wits. But every game has its rules―and consequences for breaking them. To stay alive this round, Bethany needs to play right into Stacey’s hands.

https://amzn.to/41PtMhc

(We are still on the woodcut look from last month - white on black trees surround a small cottage with a red circle in the upper half with the title in white. Helvetica font for a modern look though. Nice!)

An old house turns out to not be as empty as its new owners supposed. A nobleman barters his soul in exchange for arcane knowledge. A stranger with a terrible curse looks for an unsuspecting victim to take her place. Monsters, killers and unquiet spirits stalk these stories, drawn from the places where folklore, the Gothic and modern fiction intertwine – Irish literature’s dark and ever-present shadow.

https://amzn.to/4hU7bET

(A modern blocky sans serif tells us this is sci-fi where there is a shadowed monstrous claw reaching over a person in cryo-sleep. Cold blues and greys are set off by the title in bold red text.)

Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago…

The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there’s a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents.

https://amzn.to/3Y1tKAD

(Nice use of Helvetica like black text on white. The simple cover features a wormy red tentacle squirming from ashower drain. Creepy. I have a review copy!)

A historic hotel long past its prime and huddled along The Cut, a questionable Lake Erie beach, isn’t Sadie Miles’ ideal place to raise a toddler while also navigating her second pregnancy. After finally fleeing her abusive ex-fiancé, though, Sadie’s new housekeeping position and free room at L’Arpin Hotel are the best she can manage.

On her first night, Sadie runs to help a guest struggling in the hotel’s pool only to find the water calm and empty when she gets there, leaving her with a lingering unease. When a guest then goes missing and her manager insists they simply left without checking out, Sadie suspects he’s covering up darker goings-on in the hotel.

https://amzn.to/3RwnE7i

(Another one with a kindleprenure title : Their Monstrous Hearts: A Gothic Horror Novel with a Dual Timeline and a Suspenseful Mystery. A lovely cover with red blocky Impact text of black featuring a woman’s hands holding a butterfly and caterpillar - the red text colour is mirrored in long red nails. Effective!)

A mysterious stranger shows up at Riccardo’s apartment with some news: his grandmother Perihan has died, and Riccardo has inherited her villa in Milan along with her famed butterfly collection.

The struggling writer is out of options. He’s hoping the change of scenery in Milan will inspire him, and maybe there will be some money to keep him afloat. But Perihan’s house isn’t as opulent as he remembers. The butterflies pinned in their glass cases seem more ominous than artful. Perihan’s group of mysterious old friends is constantly lurking. And there’s something wrong in the greenhouse.

https://amzn.to/3DVlP0P

(A woman with long red hair floats across the middle of the book. Compelling while telling us nothing. The text is Trajan Pro or something used on many books but works here. I have a review copy on NetGalley!)

When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can't deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior…

Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human…

https://amzn.to/42fysMp

(Compases and mapping tools decorate the cover which is yellow and white on black. Not quite a woodcut look but clipart style. A proper mix of sans serif for large text and serif for small.)

What you hold in your hands is a travel guide to the strange and surreal. From arcades along a boardwalk and jetties at the edges of tourist towns, to a rural village in Pakistan and hollows hidden deep within a forest in Pennsylvania, strange things can happen no matter where you are.

With twenty-two stories by authors such as Brian Keene, Maurice Broaddus, Ai Jiang, Samit Basu, and KS Walker, editors Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner take readers on a tour of places where weird things happen. Places where ghosts are real, old gods are hungry, and towns are not as idyllic as they appear to be.

https://amzn.to/3YbBv6O

(A dark overhead of a cull-de-sac that ends in a pit leading to teh earths molten core. As per usual. You know, how your street ends in a helllmouth? Yeah, that. With butter yellow bold serif text for the title and Trajan Pro for the name.)

Jerry Campbell just wants to be left alone. Grief-stricken over the death of his wife Abigail, the elderly widower and recent retiree is desperate for a change of scenery. When his realtor suggests a new home in Fairview Acres, a retirement community in the Poconos, Jerry figures it will be a nice place to spend the rest of his days in solitude.

Until he moves in.

His neighbors all say Katherine suffers from a form of dementia called Sundowner's Syndrome, but as the weeks progress and the strangeness mounts, Jerry begins to suspect there is something else going on in his neighborhood. Something that has to do with the huge stone in the community park...

https://amzn.to/3E8tfxC

(A black wolf dog in a window snarls at the reader. Nice stark white tall serif text works well with a classic looking book.)

One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy's father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.

As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, Jess slowly comes to a horrifying understanding of the butchery that follows them―the boy can turn his every fear into reality.

And when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared.

https://amzn.to/3XFHxwl

(A chunky screen print of a woman a black habit on a beige background, but she has a popart style green face with red almost lipstick crayon text scrawled across the front for the title.)

Sister Rafaela, a newcomer to the cloistered Sisters of Divine Innocence, yearns for redemption from her horrific past. However, her new abbey, bound by a vow of silence and a disturbing burial ritual, hides its own sinister secrets.

When a mysterious stranger arrives and dies soon after, her body resists decomposition, sparking fevered claims of sainthood among the nuns... but Rafaela suspects something far darker.

As the abbey teeters on the edge of madness, Rafaela and local priest Father Bruno race to uncover whether the Sisters of Divine Innocence are graced by a divine miracle-or consumed by unspeakable evil.

https://amzn.to/43DiFt7

(Yikes - a beautiful cover with a kindlepreneur title Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng: A Darkly Funny, Gory, and Ghostly Horror Novel)

A very pretty bat splayed over a dried flower arrangement kind of a play on orange and teal with brown umbers and grey blue tones. Gorgeous microserif text in stark white.

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train.

Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater.

So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can’t be sure what's real and what’s in her head.

https://amzn.to/4lepXda

(I love this large hot pink blocky Impact text over a dark background featuring a bif ominous arcade cabinet. OOOOOoooo)

October, 1982. Forced to move to the quiet seaside town of Tasker Bay by her mother, the only thing on high schooler Andi’s mind is saving up enough money to return to her old stomping grounds in Silicon Valley. Her self-taught skills with all things electronic make her a perfect fit for a job at the dingy local arcade where she can tune out from life and bankroll her eventual escape.

When Polybius—a new bleeding-edge game of unknown origin arrives—the shop is suddenly overwhelmed with players fighting for time on the machine. After a grisly act of violence goes unsolved, the town descends into chaos. Is the arrival of this mysterious game and the disorder in Tasker Bay a coincidence?

https://amzn.to/4iKz3fP

(Comes as advertised - the cover features a spiral staircase in the dark yellow lit woods. Unsettling morning shot with all caps white Gill Sans looking text.)

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . . .

https://amzn.to/4iOIWtk

When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.

Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard—a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness.