This Year in Horror

https://amzn.to/41k1FXy

Alone in the desert and covered in blood, Josiah Dennis comes across an abandoned town, and two unlikely storytellers burdened with sharing its history—past, present, and future.

Rogue gangs of vampires, young witches, flayed cadavers, giant lizards, and men with dark hearts dwell in these pages, looming over Buzzard’s Edge, a town full of people struggling to survive in an unforgiving Arizona frontier.

So, sit down a spell, and settle where the daybreak ends.

The cover features a faceless family at a table - tall sans-serif font over red and white imagery. Very liminal and evocative  of the 50s.

https://amzn.to/3B5okMm

Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from his home in Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get them medical help.

A face made up of forest green circulatory system on a black background, set off by bright yellow bold print brush text.

https://amzn.to/4fBMgWZ

1988: Thirteen-year-old Andy Miller and his friends – Carl, Brian, Johnny and Gavin – become witnesses to the vicious attack of their classmate, Poppy, and the brutal murder of her sister at a flooded railway line they call the frog ponds. They lead the police to a suspect, a vulnerable older boy whose differences single him out. But when he commits suicide, his guilt is never proven. And the crime goes unpunished, until . . .

Now: Carl’s body is found beside the same body of water – and the lives of the four remaining friends start to unravel. Is the hag-like woman terrorizing their every waking moment really a grown-up Poppy hellbent on revenge? Or something else . . . something steeped in childhood nightmares? Something determined to reveal the truth and punish the wicked.

Red and black oil paint style - a man in a leather mask holds a camera aimed at the reader. Nice plain rounded serif font in white. 

https://amzn.to/4fb5EJf

There are casual fans, and then there are genuine fanatics. Gary has been obsessed with the extreme side of cinema since he could remember, and has been on a quest to see every infamous film possible, the more shocking, the better.

He has even tried his hand at making his own films, but tonight he will be part of an urban legend, the thing people like him fantasize about: tonight Gary is going to see an actual snuff film.

But what he witnesses on a small screen at a secret location is only the beginning of a downward spiral where entertainment and fate collide…where Gary discovers there was a latent reason for his life long fascination with the dark side…

The cover is a winter scene of a person walking in a snowy glen with a blood spot on the front right of the cover and large Neptune like planet looming close in the sky.

https://amzn.to/3WyTofl

In this collection of 15 science fiction and horror tales, endure nuclear winter with Earth’s last desperate survivors, help a woman trapped in her laundry room battle something terrifying in her clothes dryer, or travel with a convicted man on his lonely walk to prison across a desert planet—going from the most crowded cities to the loneliest reaches of the galaxy, in the now and in the future, exploring humankind’s darkest depths and noblest aspirations.

The cover is black with muted yellow and green featuring a hand floating in a lava lamp. Text  dominates in a retro style fat serif in orange.

https://amzn.to/4hStpbw

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
 
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. 
 
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.

The cover features a red-lit head with a hand grasping it on a black background.

https://amzn.to/3P6kc2p

A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. 
"If you're reading this, you've likely thought that the world would be a better place without you."

Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same--and worse--in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him--it's for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.

Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx--a potential candidate for Ashley's next ritual--who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.

The cover featured yellow sans-serif text over a loose pastel sketch of a woman's face.

https://amzn.to/3ZGMjet

In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss a flight, and over dinner, discover they've both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with the same beguiling woman no one has seen since.

Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Red text in a stretched bold serif style over what looks like a stylized ice cavers. All black, red and white.

https://amzn.to/49te11y

For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what’s happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car—and then of themselves.

Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble—along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.

To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present, and themselves in a monstrous new light . . .

The cover is tan with river stones arranged in the shape of a skull with the authors names repeated in a warbled circle around the stones. 

https://amzn.to/4fGFQ94

Professor Everard, weird fiction scholar and proclaimed critic of H.P Lovecraft's works, is no stranger to making people mad. Giving convention presentations on the triteness and melodrama of Lovecraft's work pays the bills, though. Sometimes he even gets laid.

When he angers a beautiful but dangerous witch and devotee of Lovecraft's work, she casts a spell on him, sending him to a dimension where Lovecraft's works are very real—and very deadly. Everard must find a way through this alternate dimension to get home, before the worst of Lovecraft's horrors prove what a master of monstrosities he really was.

Beautiful cover of black with a red relief evoking minimalist film poster art. Blackletter style font. Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).

https://amzn.to/4gLd3jU

Steeped in the sexual tension between two young women, this is a beautiful, brand-new edition of the original cult classic.

In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest - the beautiful Carmilla.

A black and white stripy affair similar to the other books in the  series - skulls and roses adorn the title.

https://amzn.to/4j4U4m6

Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to her work, the seventh in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a chance to discover the evocative voice of Gemma Files, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich.

A beautiful cover of a woodcut style black background featuring a cabin in the piney woods, the relief is a muted red to dark teal gradient. The type is soft serifs.

https://amzn.to/4gLLhDV

Twenty-five year old Calla is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

The cover is a gorgeous black with red text featuring a plump red steak plated directly on green herbs.

https://amzn.to/3PS68JY

Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember.

When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.

Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful stray named Eden turns up in a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make a bid for freedom.

The cover has a porcelain doll's face with yellow fluted block text over top - reminds me somewhat of Incident in a Ghostland. I've requested an ARC.

https://amzn.to/3BQLsPo

Winifred arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew; tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. 

Compounded with her disdain for the children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

The cover looks like a techno thriller - skyscrapers with ghastly red skulls leering over a city street. Strange but it works. White sans serif font. Very nouveau Tom Clancy

https://amzn.to/42tOjs7

In the aftermath of a catastrophic New Year's Eve explosion in the heart of the city, Miki embarks upon a treacherous odyssey into the devastated area in search of her famous photojournalist sister, Jennifer, who has mysteriously disappeared.

With only the help of a former homicide detective, a cagey teenage street dodger, and a set of lurid photographs her sister left behind, Miki will come face to face with the manifestations of malevolent psychic energy called Paramentals-and the sinister conspiracy that created them.

Ochre text in stretched bold serif over a very creepy woodland lake - very lonesome umber, red, brown with many verticals in the tree trunks. Haunting. 

https://amzn.to/429jQzx

With its long history of countless deaths and disappearances, Aiken Mill, Virginia, has become known to law enforcement as “The Cold Case Capital of the World.” A mutilated body has turned up in town and Sheriff Parrott discovers frightening clues that lead him to believe some ghostly force—or entity—may be responsible for the killing.

Meanwhile, psychology professor Martin Pritchett and his brother, Phillip, happen upon a crumbling, century-old house beside a body of water called Black Tooth Pond. A strange compulsion leads both men back to the house time and time again, but neither can remember any of the events that occur there.

As both the Sherrif and Pritchett brothers attempt to solve their respective mysteries, their paths begin to converge—paths that lead inexorably to the ancient, foreboding house at Black Tooth Pond.

This title has one of those kindleprenure titles that has added to it: "Creepy Gothic Horror with a Haunting Thematic Atmosphere, Perfect for Winter 2025, Don't Read Alone" which I find annoying as that is not the title

Really great cover in red and black with a twisted tree that has glowing eyes peering out from a hollow knot in the trunk.

https://amzn.to/4j7yjBZ

There’s something wrong in Renfield County.

It’s in the water, the soil, the wood. But worst of all, it’s in the minds of the residents, slowly driving them mad. When Lawrence Renfield massacred his family and drew "The Giant" in his farmhouse with their blood, no one imagined the repercussions. At the very least, the bloodstained wood should have been set aflame, not chopped down and repurposed as furniture, décor, and heirlooms across the county. But that’s exactly what happened. Now regular people—like you and me—are sitting on… eating with… admiring… the cursed wood and reaping the consequences.

A beautiful red on black cover with a Dungeness crab illustrated on the cover. One of those kindle books that have a long 'kindlepreur' title that tells us it is unputdownable. This is not the title. "Scuttler's Cove: A chilling, unputdownable folk horror thriller" as the cover says  it is 'a seaside idyll with horror at its heart'. It still sounds good though. 

https://amzn.to/4hwhOy4

Scuttler’s Cove is a working village, nestling in dramatic coastal scenery in Cornwall, where life has gone on uninterrupted for centuries… until this seaside idyll was discovered by the rich. Now the quaint cottages have been snapped up by time-share and rental companies, and the locals can barely afford to live in their own town.

It is a very different place for Merrin Moon, who left for university at the age of eighteen and never looked back. Now in her thirties, she returns to the Cove for the first time since, after the death of her mother. She soon discovers that there are forces at play in the village that she could never have imagined. Something old and terrible is awakening beneath the town’s hallowed ground. And with it comes a horror that the residents have fought for generations to keep a secret.

The cover in red with white text reminds me of the Mallus Malleficarum or Withcraft and Superstition. Plain but effective.

https://amzn.to/404hgIB

Blood on Satan's Claw is widely regarded as part of the ‘unholy trinity’ of cult classics which gave birth to the film genre that would become known as folk horror. Along with The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, it found new ways to terrify audiences using elements of superstition and folklore.

Now, fifty years after its release, readers can experience the unearthing of this terror in the film’s first official novelisation: a compelling and frightening retelling of the fate of unfortunate villagers sacrificed by their own children as devil worship infiltrates their rural existence.

Written by the film’s original screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons and featuring haunting new illustrations from Richard Wells, it is an atmospheric and defining cult classic in the making.

A poison green background with a oiled fish tin of eyeballs. Fittingly weird and cosmic, as the twitter account it was spawned of is. 

https://amzn.to/4fRGEa6

Noah desperately needs a new job that involves less blood and piss than his current one as a janitor. So, when he spots an ad for a newspaper seeking an ad rep with ‘No experience preferred’, he puts on his good shirt and marches down to their average-looking office to unknowingly sign his life away.

Malachia is the only human left in the City of Silence and she spends her time wandering its empty, bone-filled streets. Until one day she finds a lone figure hunched over a typewriter, his fingers enmeshed with the keys. Could he be the answer to finding her lost love?

Propelled by their pursuits for rent money and truth, Noah and Malachia are pushed to their limits in this tightly-plotted satire of occupational hazards and conglomerate powers.

Dread Singles (@hottestsingles) 
HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, FLESH UNDULATING IN TIME TO THEIR FERAL KEENING

A lovely cover evoking The Nightmare without the gremlin. Green block calligraphic text.

https://amzn.to/420XpfZ

It’s the height of the industrial revolution and ten years into Lenore’s marriage to steel baron Henry, their relationship has soured. When Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the remote British moorlands to host a hunting party, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into their lives. Carmilla; weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night. Carmilla, who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed with terrible hunger . . .

As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk.

The cover is in keeping with the rest of this series featuring a litho-style graveyard in black over a gradient of red to orange. Tall sans-serif white text.

https://amzn.to/4h3T3Zz

Keira is caught in a deadly battle. Her ability to help ghosts move on from the mortal world has made her a threat to Artec, a powerful corporation intent on trapping the tortured dead for profit. They've been tracking her for years and now, finally, there's nowhere left for her to run.

Artec fears Keira and everything she's capable of. They will stop at nothing to eliminate her―including sending armed men after everyone she holds dear.

A rather boring cover of a door hanger on a motel room door. Fitting rolled serif typography of the 30s perhaps. 

https://amzn.to/40llLQd

These short stories evoke an alluring voice, sure to make the reader shiver in arousal and horror, never quite knowing what could happen next. Castro pushes past the limits of gothic terror and fantasy to carve a dangerous path of lust and violence, all throughout the reader’s charming stay at The Pink Agave Motel.

The cover has a howling wolf illustrated in green ink on a black background. Yellow chunky serifed text. Strange choice for the  title as it is often used so this book would be confused with others easily. Blurbed by George R. R. Martin. 

https://amzn.to/3CesN05

Under cover of the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff—gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon, after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world.

All manner of participants, both human and not, are about with their ancient tools and their animal familiars in preparation for the dread night. The witch, the mad monk, the vengeful vicar, the Count who sleeps by day, the Good Doctor and the hulking Experiment Man he fashioned from human body parts, and a wild-card American named Larry Talbot—all the while Snuff is keeping Things at bay and staying a leap ahead of the Great Detective, who knows quite a bit more than he lets on.

the cover is beautiful and evocative of the yellow wallpaper being a  slat and plaster wall with a hole in some faded and stained old wallpaper. The font is a distressed black sans-serif.  

https://amzn.to/3PQHCco

Newly-minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. The only reprieve from her small world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago. 

Alice is a thirteen year old girl who claims she’s being haunted by a witch. Living with her family in their crowded home in a remote village, Alice’s symptoms are increasingly disturbing, and money is tight. Taking this job will give Mina some experience and Alice will get better, Mina is sure of it.

But instead of improving, Alice’s behaviour becomes increasingly inexplicable and intense. The town has a deep history of superstition and witchcraft. They believe there is evil in the world. They believe there are ways of dealing with it. And they don’t expect outsiders to understand.

A red cover with massive blood spatter stylized over a DSLR camera on a city street.

https://amzn.to/4hwPcEQ

Rick is a young, struggling filmmaker with big dreams but no direction. By day, he’s trapped in a soul-crushing job he despises; by night, he pours his heart into low-budget short films, hoping to break into Hollywood. When he meets Sergio, a charismatic yet enigmatic producer, Rick is convinced he’s finally found his big break.

Behind the allure of success lies a twisted underworld of snuff films–gruesome, underground creations blurring the line between art and depravity.

As Rick becomes entrenched in Sergio’s world, but the deeper he dives, the more he loses: friendships, love, and the last fragments of his humanity. What starts as a desperate attempt to make a name for himself spirals into a waking nightmare of violence and betrayal.

Rick never imagined his pursuit of success would lead him here. Now, as the horrors he’s complicit in mount, he’s left to question whether he can escape–or if he even wants to.

https://amzn.to/4kfbVaJ

Lovely cover but hard to describe - a tree rendered in dark charcoal black on a white cover. The illustration is beautiful - a skeleton in the hollow of a tree - with stark red text in a script for the word Bella, surrounded by chunky serif text for the rest. Really pretty. Very simple. Very pretty.

When Dr Emma Lloyd relocates to the quaint English parish of Hagley, she hopes to leave her painful past behind and reinvent herself as a forensic investigator. But her fresh start takes a sinister twist when she’s drawn into the parish’s most infamous cold case: the mysterious 80-year-old murder of a Jane Doe found discarded in a tree’s hollow. A woman the locals have come to know as Bella.

As Emma digs deeper and secrets come to light, she faces unexpected resistance—from her superiors to Bella herself. Haunted by Bella’s vengeful ghost, Emma begins to suspect the case is far more dangerous—and personal—than she ever imagined.

https://amzn.to/41DryRN

I love this cover. Bubble gum pink on black - but mostly pink - image of a heart made of screaming mouths full of white teeth surrounded by tentacle-like arteries. Wild. The font is like what I call a Bootleg Serif, kind of 70’s western porno look.

Jennifer Plummer and the Divine Flesh have exactly three things in common: 1) they're trapped inside Jennifer's body; 2) they despise each other; and 3) they're in love with Daryl Plummer, Jennifer's ex-husband. But when Jennifer takes an experimental wonder drug to free herself from the Divine Flesh's control, it only makes things worse. Expelled from Jennifer's body, the Divine Flesh can now "love" everyone in existence to death, which in this case, means being assimilated forever into the beast. With time running out, it's somehow up to Jennifer and Daryl to save the universe from complete and total destruction. Can a dysfunctional drug mule and an electrician from rural Idaho stop the cosmic abomination before it's too late? Jennifer thinks, maybe.

https://amzn.to/4iicPRR

I fucking love this cover. This reminds me of Mastodon by Steve Stred, the end of 1310 Clover filed Lane, The creature features of The Mist or Troll Hunter. The twist is having two dogs overlooking a cornfield where a titanic creature is making it's way across the landscape. Not a person in sight - condensed text - perfection. 

You won’t find the Eris Ridge Trail on any map. You won’t find the people who go missing on it, either. The Eris Ridge Trail has no beginning. No end. It runs forever, connecting realities across space and time. Four travelers find themselves lost on the Trail…

A novice reporter who learns that some shortcuts are anything but. A grieving author who’s reunited with his dead dog in the tunnels beneath a haunted hotel. A young man who tries a new ride-share app that abandons him in the space between Nebraska and Colorado. A seasoned hiker and his aging dog who discover the remains of a six-legged rodent near the sign for a trail they’ve never heard of.

Disoriented by an ever-changing landscape and hunted by otherworldly predators, can they work together long enough to find their way home, or will they fall prey to the cosmic beast that guards the Trail?

https://amzn.to/3Panh1d

The cover is black with red and white text arranged in a circle that surrounds an off-centre nun who is rejoicing to the heavens or something like that. Plain, brutalist, Bazterrica.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

https://amzn.to/3XrPi8X

Four colour comic book teens running at a dutch tilt awy from a werewolf masked killer with a knife. Interesting to a certain crowd for sure! 

CJ has survived the horror movie that is her life by following one rule: blend in and stay out of it. But that's hard to do when your trauma gets turned into a bestselling book series. The Slasherville books are a true crime phenomenon, documenting the Wolf Man massacres that changed CJ's life forever. CJ hates everything about the books and their fans, but at this point she's just grateful there aren't any more murders to write about.

Until one day when an unpublished Slasherville book shows up on her doorstep predicting new Wolf Man killings. CJ is sure it's a bad prank. But then the events in the book start coming true, and when CJ breaks her one rule, the Final Girl-the person who, according to the book, was supposed to stop the Wolf Man-ends up dead. Suddenly, blending in and staying out of it is not an option, and CJ will have to use everything she knows about the rules of horror to make it out alive.

https://amzn.to/41E8K4Y

Features an overgrown ivy on the cover with a dimly candle lit window in the centre through which we can see the silhouette of a woman.

It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.

The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.

https://amzn.to/3EYW3Zv

Dark blue on black featuring a raven perched in the foreground and a farm house in the back. What more could you want! Stylized serifed creepy toggle size text, that's what! I like it. 

Death can come for anyone at anytime. There's no escaping it. There are a million ways to die, not all of them expected. What starts as a peaceful day can end in the worst possible way.

So brace yourself for the inevitable.

Memento Mori contains thirteen stories filled with curses, monsters, and deteriorating minds that will leave you with the reminder that one day, you too will die.

Stories Include:

A Concert to Die For: A struggling musician finally gets the opportunity he's dreamed of, but how many lives will he be willing to trade for it? Dolls: After an incident at a high school reunion, voodoo dolls start appearing around town. Wherever they go, tragedy follows. Footsteps: When a medium learns the truth of her powers, she meets her biggest challenge yet in an entity that gets its powers from hunting psychics. Stockholm Syndrome: Avera wakes in an experimental facility with no memory of who she is or how she got there.

https://amzn.to/4bs8aL4

A very neat and corporate heavy Helvetica black text on blue - this cover features a blue sky, with head office floating on a boulder. Odd. Soothing.

Welcome to the Organization.
Employees of the organization contribute to its mission to apply non-traditional methods to the non-traditional problems of today.
To ensure that all employees have the same opportunity to thrive, the organization's state-of-the-art live and work facility has all the comforts of home, plus technology that maximizes their opportunities for collaboration.
Without the organization, Clarissa Knowles would have nowhere else to go. That is, unless she can make it to Dick's house, the professor she's been talking to online. Haunted by her failed relationship with Maurice (the existentialist), and the deaths of her parents, can Clarissa shake off the values of the organization, pack up her cat - and go?

https://amzn.to/41L2M2z 

The cover features the head of a stately buffalo, from the side, on beige. Unremarkable. The text is a red corroded western font mixed with a marker font not unlike lipstick. Interesting - just not interesting enough. 

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

https://amzn.to/3DqtP9D 

Love this photographic cover - it is a white door, slightly ajar, with a woman's hand just coming around the edge to either close it further or open it more. A mystery already. The shadows of vertical blinds fall across the door and text - mainly white bowed serif. Lovely. 

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.

A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.

https://amzn.to/3XowU0Q

The cover is the red on red of blood cells with red and white text on a black parallelogram in the centre. Boring, just like the actual book. Best cover for it I have ever seen! 

Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.

The Nebula Award-finalist reinvention of the vampire novel, described as a "masterpiece" by Guillermo del Toro.

Edward Weyland is far from your average vampire: not only is he a respected anthropology professor but his condition is biological ― rather than supernatural. He lives discrete lifetimes bounded by decades of hibernation and steals blood from labs rather than committing murder. Weyland is a monster who must form an uneasy empathy with his prey in order to survive

https://amzn.to/4ko02Pv

Hot pink skies over a strip of wet highway heading into forever with black pine forests on the sides. Glowing white hot Helvetica. Impressive and tense looking already. The eponymous white line beckons. 

At a passing glance, County Road 951 is an entirely unremarkable stretch of blacktop, a two-lane scar across the Cascade foothills of Central Oregon.

But the road is known by another name, coined by locals who’ve had to clean up after all those scenic detours went horribly wrong: The Devil’s Driveway.

When Livia and her long-time friends take the Driveway as a shortcut to a much-needed weekend getaway, what begins as a morning joyride quickly becomes anything but. Soon, they’re driving for their lives, pursued by a horror beyond anything they ever imagined.

The Devil’s Driveway might be only 15 miles long, but with danger at every turn, it will take the four women to the very limits of their friendships and their sanity.

https://amzn.to/3EYfMbM

Red corroded serif text on a black and white image of a graveyard featuring a freshly dug grave; pile of dirt, shovel and all.

With his daughter in a casket and his wife in a cult, David Eden is on the brink of losing touch with reality. So when he begins conversing with his daughter’s ghost and then encounters a nightmare monster in the cemetery that can’t possibly be real but is most certainly deadly, he is convinced he’s lost it. But David is also out to get vengeance on the white supremacists he blames for his child’s death, and he’s about to learn that sometimes it takes a monster to defeat one.

Buy on Indigo

Very cool impressionistic pastel cover of a woman standing on the edge of a forest, facing the camera. Wild and fantastical mushrooms crowd the foreground while a polluted cloud rolls in behind her. Clashes of orange and blue create a visual miasma. White text. Looks great. 

Living in a post-climate disaster world protected by a layer of artificial cloud, Mallory knows every shade of darkness, their world lit sparingly by bioluminescence. But when Rein stumbles across their path—radioactive light bleeding from their teeth, their skin twisted and burned—Mallory's worldview implodes, and the true cost of their survival becomes all too clear.

A haunting cli-fi novella ideal for fans of Tiffany Morris and Stephanie Feldman, EVERY DARK CLOUD combines a dystopian setting and class-conscious narrative with a glimmer of hope for our shared humanity.

https://amzn.to/3F1aGf4

Duotone red on black, this features dried rose stems with thorns and a fittingly gothic blackletter style font in stark white.

The email that lands in Billie Hope’s inbox seems like a gift from the universe. For $100, she can purchase a spacious Victorian home in Juliana, Georgia, a small town eager to boost its economy in the wake of the pandemic. She can leave behind her cramped New York City rental and the painful memories of shuttering her once thriving restaurant and start over with her husband and her daughter. Plus, she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity. It seems like a dream come true…or a devil’s bargain.

https://amzn.to/3XkSR0U 
 
Black tress on red with white Helvetica all caps text. Lovely. The trees are in the shape of a skull which is quite a feat using what looks like Jack Pine. Plain, effective.

In the aftermath of a painful breakup, Mike and his friend Wade seek solace in the remote beauty of Devil's Cup State Park, Colorado. Their quest for peace is abruptly ended when a meteor strike causes a rock to fall, trapping them and a diverse group of campers within the ancient volcanic caldera. As they grapple with their new reality, a far more sinister challenge emerges from the depths of the earth.

The sanctuary they sought becomes a hunting ground as the group discovers the ground infested with lethal, flesh-piercing worms. The situation turns dire when they realize these predators are merely the heralds of something far more terrifying: the NAMELESS THINGS. With no way to call for help, survival hinges on their ability to outsmart the unseen terror lurking beneath their feet.

https://amzn.to/41F4KB2 

Cool cover in teals, cyan, blues and blacks with fuchsia highlights, a cyberpunk looking face bisected with digital lines with Helvetica or terminal text. Effective, reminds me of the film hardware already. 

Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head—his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents’ mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet—didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world.

Then a car accident changed everything.

Spiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches—first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders.

The host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real?

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.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

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/3F2ohmu

The cover is red on black: an inverted pentagram and candles with Roman text what more do you need? 

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

https://amzn.to/3GSSvsH

A man walks down a lonely country road in blue moonlight on the cover. Red blood paint text. Plain but effective complementary colours. 

Deep in the Cumberland Mountains awaits an evil and Three Forks, Virginia is at the center. An old legend merges with a being beyond human comprehension, and Silas Sword has fallen face-first into it.

Evicted from his apartment, and fired from his job as a detective, he is forced to return home to Three Forks, where he finds his parents brutally murdered. Silas is pulled into the local police to help investigate. As things unfold, he finds a mysterious cabin that morphs with each visit. Add in a mysterious blue mist, and a freak snowstorm, and you have a recipe for disaster.

https://amzn.to/3SkswwN

Gold intaglio on black - a very effective art deco cover. It looks like an old menu cover. Display font for the title and Futura for the author’s name. 

Mabel Rose Dixon will do anything to become a Ziegfeld girl—including picking the pockets of the wealthy NYC elite to fund her way to stardom. When she picks the wrong pocket, Mabel loses her soul to a hotel run by demons and tumbles into the world of The Grand Hotel, a place where any artist can make it big.

Mabel’s greatest wish to be famous is granted. Every night, she performs as the starring act to a crowded theater and finds she is never without patrons. But Mabel quickly learns that losing her soul to get everything she ever wanted comes at a much steeper cost than what she bargained for. She must steal her soul back before the Grand’s annual May’s Eve Ball or become a demon herself forever.

https://amzn.to/3YwJ9ZL

A vivid green and red vine grows up to encircle a tiny planet earth. Mainly black background of outer space. White roman text for the title and sans-serif for the name. Eye catching! 

Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has believed her.

Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it's already been warned, and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia's biological family is on the way to bring her home, and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.

https://amzn.to/4mfcz98

A victorian lady holding a mince pie that looks quite bloody with a black background. Red text in various styles of serif display font and letterforms with some subtitling in an Antiquarian font.

London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.

As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything. A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.

https://amzn.to/3RO6wKE

All kinds of stuff here! A woman's face in red peers through a tear in a victorian mansion surrounded by lilies on a black background. White Futura text.

Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career to live out the rest of her life as a recluse.

Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will, and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian’s grand, sprawling, Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.

In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. As Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, disturbing visions and bizarre behaviors start to take hold of everyone in the house, forcing them to realize they are being haunted by something far more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth behind the house’s origins and the last, tragic summer they spent there—or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?

https://amzn.to/4jHC29w

Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak years ago, they never expected to see each other again.

Now, as part of his work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Book lives aboard the Christabel, a 19th century freighter half-sunken off the shore of Galveston. Over many years, a massive forest of mangrove trees has grown up through the deck of the ship, creating a startlingly beautiful enigma Book calls the Floating Forest. As a powerful storm churns through the Gulf, he intends to sleep on board as usual.

But when he arrives at the dock, he’s stunned to find Ruby there waiting for him. And she’s not alone. With her are a mysterious woman and her infant child, asking Book to hide them safely aboard the Christabel while they're on the run. Only it isn’t the police who are after them, it’s a coven of witches the woman, Mae, has fled, stealing away the helpless infant for whom they had hideous plans…or so Mae claims.

It’s lunacy and Book wants nothing to do with it. But after the way he and Ruby ended things, and the unspoken pain between them, he can’t refuse. Yet even as he brings them out to the ruined ship and its floating forest, there are shadowed figures looming back in Galveston, waiting out the storm. And despite the worsening wind and rain, the night birds are flying, scouring the coastline for their prey.

https://amzn.to/4jWenlg
Black woodcut on a fleshy paper background features an old house in the forest with one red light on in the attic. Ominous. Very interesting almost felt marker font that somehow fits.

On the anniversary of her sister’s death, Talia returns home after curfew, bloodied and bruised. She’s desperate to keep it from her parents; she knows what they’ll do.

But when Autumn and Colin realize what’s happened to their daughter, they don’t intend to stay idle.

Leaving Talia with friends, her parents go after the monsters who hurt their child … but they never expected to find real monsters. They aren’t prepared for what is behind the urban legends of Red Walls House. Monsters with white eyes, clawed fingers, and sizzling tongues who ate pieces of their daughter.

Now it’s Talia and her friends who must return to Red Walls House on a rescue mission. Talia’s just praying she can get everyone out of there alive.

https://amzn.to/4jOG4gf

Very cool futuristic font in white and teal over a distressed photo of an astronaut standing as if for a portrait on a moonscape.

Ava must fight an entity locked in on taking out the crew of the Eden, a moon-sized cemetery in space, as it brings back the souls of the dead buried aboard. One such soul is Ava’s lost love, Roland.

The spirits of the interred on the Eden haunt those aboard, including a visiting musician is tasked with writing a new song for the dead. Her Requiem calls a cosmic entity that illuminates their darkest fears and secrets. One by one, they’re driven mad. Ava fights her grief and must rise up before they’re lost and the entity reaches Earth.

https://amzn.to/3RJIaBM

Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth,a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. He thinks his life’s purpose might be to offer closure to grieving strangers, and sets out to learn all he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.

https://amzn.to/3ENoryc

An ugly cover with black and cyan green showing chat bubbles in yellow with emojis. Red sans serif fonts complete the disjointed design.

When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington’s—whose dreams of becoming a successful influencer remain frustratingly elusive—curiosity gets the better of her, leading to the discovery of an off-the-grid social media app called MonoLife. As it turns out, there are certain cryptic rules in the user agreement that must be adhered to, such as interacting with other users at least twice daily or risk losing it all…and never, ever speaking of MonoLife’s existence to non-users or risk dire consequences.

For this is a platform that primarily rewards the worst in human behavior, and which begins chipping away at Kylie’s sanity across post after post for an ever-increasing audience of immoral fans. Now Kylie’s going to find out just how far she’s willing to go on her unyielding rise to the top—even if that means coming face-to-face with the frightening and ruthless forces behind MonoLife, who see all from deep within the shadows…

https://amzn.to/4jVugZ6

Another kind of ugly cover of a photo of a small town with the title as large sans serif letter propped up in the town. Neat looking.

As kids, outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer, and Ernie were inseparable friends in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three left to pursue lofty dreams―and achieved them. Only Ernie never left. When he falls into a coma, his three amigos feel an urgent need to return home. Don’t they remember people lapsing into comas back then? And those people always awoke…didn’t they?

After two decades, not a lot has changed in Maple Grove, especially Ernie’s obnoxious, scary mother. But Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer begin to remember a hulking, murderous figure and weirdness piled on mystery that they were made to forget. As Ernie sinks deeper into darkness, something strange awaits any friend who tries to save him.

https://amzn.to/3RKwm2d

A very pretty monotone red cover with near-watercolour layers showing a swamp and old house, birds and a lovely serif font in white over top.

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking―and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong.

Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves, and all of it stems from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room. But these things happen only when Emily’s alone, so are they happening at all? She’s still medically fragile; her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can’t fully trust her own senses. Freddie doesn’t notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start.

https://amzn.to/4iOIWtk

Lady justice in alabaster white on a white background. This sets off the scrawled black crayon title. Her blindfold is red and dripping blood. Stark and jarring!

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.

https://amzn.to/3ETw3iH

Backlit shadows of men walking in a blue and black forest. Blood is spattered and dripping behind blocky Impact style sans serif white text. Impressionistic but effective.

When Roger Brenner leaves the house because he has the urge to take a walk, no one, not even him, realizes he is about to change the world as we know it.

Roger's sudden desire quickly turns into something more as both his mind and body begin to change. He is consumed by his need to keep walking, and soon he is leaving the small town of Rocky Point behind. By the time his family realizes he's gone, he's miles away and entering an altered state of consciousness.

As the days go by and Roger continues his unnatural journey, his body begins to deteriorate. He also attracts followers, all of them murmuring the same chilling words. The growing horde travels down the East Coast, growing in size every day

In less than a week, the phenomenon spreads across the world, causing religious and political upheaval. The governments fear it's a disease. Religious leaders claim it's a sign of the apocalypse. And scientists say it's nature correcting overpopulation.

https://amzn.to/43exWQb

Cover: Sort of a speeding lights at night time-lapse in blues and purples over a washed out oil paint effect of a woman's face. Thin sans serif font that is barely there. A whole LA vibe to this. Or, well, it is trying for that. 

Johnny spots her ex, Alice, at the local cafe with a vague sense that she’s been there before. Though she’s still angry about their breakup and Alice’s subsequent ghosting, Johnny can’t resist the draw of a second shot at their relationship and accepts Alice’s invitation back to her apartment. Once there, promises are exchanged. There’s talk of wonder and change and dreams made real. But after spending the night together, they face a morning in which Alice is still Alice, Johnny is still Johnny, and the dog has doubled in size.

Over the course of a week, increasingly bizarre changes in the world around them force Johnny to consider whether the pair can change just as easily, if they can change at all. Or if both her relationship and the bounds of reality are destined to implode. The narrative of I Can Fix Her operates on nightmare logic, putting forth an irresistible tale in which the world, the narrator, and time itself are not to be trusted.

https://amzn.to/4d2ag53

Cover: A lush and nearly delicious looking red and orange bayou landscape with tall trees flanking large serif text in white on the cover. There is a person making their way through te swampy water as a focal point. Really effective.  

In 2008, a serial killer known as the Cajun Cannibal brutally murders and consumes the flesh of eight people in a small Louisiana parish. With law enforcement closing in on him, he takes his own life before he can face the inside of a courtroom.

Ten years later, when forensic psychiatrist Dr. Vincent Blackburn discovers he and the Cajun Cannibal are more closely connected than he realized, he begins a case study into the sociopathy behind the killer’s grisly deeds, only to find a torrent of small town politics, interracial family dynamics, and whispers of the supernatural muddying once clear waters.

When copycat killings start anew, Vincent is thrust into the center of it all, putting his life, his family, and his own sanity at risk. As monsters—both figurative and literal—begin to manifest, Vincent discovers that untangling the truth from the lies is only the beginning of his nightmare.

https://amzn.to/4lW3wK5

Cover: A giant glinting steel knife with a blood red penis shaped hilt, or shaft if you prefer, held aloft in a striking motion, point angled downward. This creates a pleasing angular layout with the most groovy stylized blackletter text in puke green that I have ever seen. Love this. 

Beyond the Planet of the Vampires is a gay pulp horror novel of chance. The narrative erratically loses and regains consciousness during an apocalyptic space invasion of psychic vampires, reaching across intergalactic fathoms in search of future victims.

Smoldering in a social alienation reminiscent of Genet's outlaw anti-heroes, and screaming with Joycean word play in an entirely new and unique idiom, where theories of Kant are situated with reckonings of identity and postulations on the nature of evil.

https://amzn.to/4kIWW8g

Cover: looks like a greek mythology text book. dark tertiary analogous palette using fuchsia, purple, blue, and black feature a woman's face and snake separated by a sans-serif art deco font in yellow for the title and purple for the authors name. Neat! I have no idea what this is about from the cover though.

Lena wants her life back. Her wealthy, controlling, humorless husband has just died, and now she contends with her controlling, humorless son, Drew. Lena lands in Naxos with her best friend in tow for the unveiling of her son's, pet project--the luxurious Agape Villas.

Years of marriage amongst the wealthy elite has whittled Lena's spirit into rope and sinew, smothered by tasteful cocktail dresses and unending small talk. On Naxos she yearns to rediscover her true nature, remember the exuberant dancer and party girl she once was, but Drew tightens his grip, keeping her cloistered inside the hotel, demanding that she fall in line.

Lena is intrigued by a group of women living in tents on the beach in front of the Agape. She can feel their drums at night, hear their seductive leader calling her to dance. Soon she'll find that an ancient God stirs on the beach, awakening dark desires of women across the island. The only questions left will be whether Lena will join them, and what it will cost her.

https://amzn.to/4d3aA3w

Cover: A woman stands between two red sandstone cliff faces looking toward a night sky with creatures eyes instead of stars with a giant raven overhead. Large distressed white sans serif, like Impact, then a serif font for the authors name, A little too much going on here but I like it. 

When Greta Molina’s old friend Tiller offered her the job, a ten-day cattle drive across the Wyoming prairie from the ranching town of Ten Sleep, it sounded like a well-paid break. Three hundred and twenty cows and calves, two guys her age she’s known since college, and a few long days on an ATV will give her time to sort out the mess in her head. The canyon along the trail has a history, sure, but nature has a tendency toward violence. Greta can accept that, even if it makes her insides squirm.

What Greta doesn’t know is the legacy of murder and rot that runs deep into the rocks of this land. As each night passes on the prairie, the trio faces mounting supernatural dangers: a ghost train of the damned, wild animals walking alongside dead ones—and evidence of a gigantic creature in the skies, one that’s supposedly been extinct for eons. And Tiller may be hiding even darker secrets the further they go. Safety is only ten sleeps away, but Greta soon realizes that may be too long for all of them to survive.

https://amzn.to/3RKQz83

Cover: This is my kind of cover. Just a photo of a human skull close up in red - all the text is white, sans-serif for the author and slight serifs for the title. Text-forward, memento mori. Nice. 

It’s the ultimate haunted house challenge. A crumbling stone mansion nestled in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, it may be the best-kept secret in Europe—a little-known attraction featuring nine escape rooms to explore, nine puzzles to solve, and a large cash prize for anyone who makes it to the end. There’s just one catch: no one makes it to the end of The No-End House. . . .

When Joe Hadfield hears about the house from a pair of backpackers, he’s intrigued but not interested. He’s trying to escape a nightmare of his own: the trauma of witnessing his wife’s grisly death. Traveling the world to ease his pain and grief, he meets a beautiful stranger named Helen who convinces him to try The No-End House challenge together. Joe reluctantly agrees. But as soon as they enter its walls, meet its mysterious host—and sign an ominous contract—Joe begins to understand the seductive power of The No-End House . . .

It knows his darkest secrets. It feeds his greatest fears. It makes him do things he would never do. And there is no end to what he will do . . . to make it out alive.

https://amzn.to/40w5BTG 

Cover: Slanted sans-serif comic headline text in pumpkin orange over a grainy black and white image of a masked face. Very creepy and effective!

When Come Knocking came to Los Angeles, the interactive theater production that took over six floors of an abandoned building was met with raves, lines for tickets, and reviews calling it the “must-see experience of a generation.” But after dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured on a bloody night of chaos during the show’s run, the nation was captured by one inescapable question: How could this happen?

As the dust settles, investigative reporter Adam Jakes is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the massacre. Through a series of gripping interviews with survivors, cast members, and witnesses, Jakes pieces together the chilling reality behind what was supposed to be the ultimate theatrical experience.

https://amzn.to/449Vqqh 

https://ironfangpress.com/dark-canadiana 

Cover: A Canadian flag torn in the centre showing blood spatter. Nice! 

Canada. A land packed full of beautiful landscapes, wildlife, diverse people, and poutine. A land overflowing with a dark history, local legends, cryptids, serial killers, and so much more. Explore the dark side of Canada in this anthology of short stories by these truly Canadian authors: John Adam Gosham, Steve Stred, Joe Powers, K.A. Mielke Konn Lavery, Leonard George, Dana Gricken, Anthony Michael Murphy, Stephen Coghlan, Robert Dawson, Kristal Stittle, Jon Gauthier, Alix Kampen, Debbie Powers, Dwain Campbell, Eva Roslin, Daniel Fox, Dean Italiano, Angelique Fawns, Spencer Keene, Carson Fredriksen, C. K. DeLeskie, Justin Allec, Nadia Steven Rysing, Kevin Cull Edited by James Seamone And a special Foreword by MJ Preston

https://www.amberhathaway.com/ 

When she and her brother venture to Evanston, Maine to clean out an estranged relative's estate, horror enthusiast Alice Drayon's life begins paralleling her favorite page-turners. The sojourn in their grandmother's "wicked" hometown provides the perfect opportunity for Alice to delve into Grammie's mysterious past. However, she soon discovers that the horrific event that drove Grammie away is but one small piece of the town's blighted history. Confronted with increasing hostility from Evanston's insular religious community as she closes in on the truth, Alice must risk everything to save lives. Her soft-spoken new neighbor, Riley Moore, seems to have answers ... and some dark secrets of his own. Can Alice trust him to help her put an end to Evanston's wicked practices, or will she become yet another casualty?

https://amzn.to/4mwierh

Cover: Mainly black as all the red text is laid over a black album vinyl. The sans serif text is set off by using a white cross as a 'T' with a mix of letterforms and sans-serif  almost calligraphic text.  

1998: Lily Lawlor and Drake Morgan form a punk band. Drake inspires faith in some. Fear in others. Lily is a believer.

1999: A Battle of the Bands ends in a shocking death, and a riot that claims the lives of three teenagers.

2009: At the height of her stardom, Lily walks into a police station and confesses to murder.

Now: The band has refused to talk to the press about the night of the riot, Lily’s confession, or anything else. It's been over a decade, but Lily has finally agreed to an interview. And the band is following her lead.

What follows is a story of prophecy, death, and apocalypse. A story about love and love lost. A story about the antichrist. Maybe it’s all true. Maybe none if it is.

Either way, this is their story. And they’re sticking to it.

https://amzn.to/44biHIv 

Cover: Quite plain magenta text on a black background resembling an invitation envelope, evidenced by an ornate wax seal in the centre. Intriguing! 

When legendary horror author Mortimer Queen passes, a group of writers find themselves invited to his last will and testament reading expecting a piece of his massive fortune. Each have their own unique connection to the literary icon, some known, some soon to be discovered, and they've been waiting for their chance to step into the author's shoes for some time.
Instead, they arrive at his grand manor and are invited to play a game. The rules are simple, solve the riddle and progress to the next room. If they don't, the manor will take one of them for itself.

You see, the Queen estate was built on the bones of Mortimer's family, and like any true horror story, the house is still very, very hungry.

https://amzn.to/4kITMRW

Cover: this is a two-for as they say. One book printed upside down and bound to the back of the other. In Canada, we would expect bilingual publications like this. Doutone image of a farm house on one and a face on the other in yellow on black adorn each cover with fat serif text. According to the publishers mark on the spine, it seems that Killer on the Road is the front of the book. 

The Babysitter Lives

Charlotte’s last babysitting gig almost ended in tragedy when her young charge sleepwalked unnoticed into the middle of the street, only to be found unharmed by Charlotte’s mother. Charlotte vows to be extra careful this time. But the house is filled with mysterious noises and secrets that only the twins understand, echoes of horrors that Charlotte gradually realizes took place in the house eleven years ago. Soon Charlotte has to admit that every babysitter’s worse nightmare has come true: they’re not alone in the house.

The Killer on the Road

Sixteen-year-old Harper has decided to run away from home after she has another blow-out argument with her mother. However, her two best friends, little sister, and ex-boyfriend all stop her from hitchhiking her way up Route 80 in Wyoming by joining her on an intervention disguised as a road trip. What they don’t realize is that Harper has been marked by a very unique serial killer who’s been trolling the highway for the past three years, and now the killer is after all of them in this fast-paced and deadly chase novel that will have your heart racing well above the speed limit as the interstate becomes a graveyard.

https://amzn.to/3SluVrk

Cover: I love this - a watercolour look image of a girl in a nightgown flowing downriver, surrounded by lily pads, Mushrooms and lichen sprout form her chest. A brushstroke yellow font for the title and pond scum green heavy serif for the text. I have an ARC audio for this one, 

Buried secrets only spread.

Erin's brother Bryan has been missing for five years.

It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn’t the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved.

When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces―from this world and beyond―hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried.

https://amzn.to/4mwwG2y

Cover: Hard to describe, yellows and ochers make up a face with a bloodless tear in the throat showing snakes writhing within like an anatomical drawing. Snakes abound, medusa-like. Striking pale yellow stretched serif text surrounds all. Art Deco but with serif fonts - crazy, I know. 

Having always preferred the company of microbes, Kesta has spent her life looking down the barrel of a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. But that changed when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So, when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.

Though the government has rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent.

https://amzn.to/4eEKYL1

Cover: Black and gold on forest green; A hand in a warding mudra symbol hovers under a grosbeak or other seed eating bird that has pins in it or radiance, it is hard to tell. There are black ivy or wrought iron decorations on each side.  

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

https://amzn.to/3TfaoFg 

Cover: This could be an alternate cover for Horror Movie with a boy in silhouette down a hallway, waiting, his shadow elongated on the wall revealing branches surrounding him like antlers and claws. Green and yellow, orange and black dominate with the typical fat rounded serif font we now relate to this author. 

When Casey Wilson’s parents tell him that his friend is coming for a sleepover, he has no idea who that might be. Ever since the Zoom Incident, everyone treats him like a pariah, and his tics are worse than ever.  

When Morel appears, he’s not like any friend Casey has ever met. His skin is like clay, and he doesn’t speak. But Casey’s parents are charmed by the strange kid, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to besides his sister, Ally, who is away at college. As his normally loving parents grow distant from Casey, they gush and fawn over Morel. Casey knows something is wrong—but with no end in sight to the sleepover, he’s exhausted. And in the dark, out of the corner of his eye, Morel doesn’t look like a kid at all. . . .

https://amzn.to/3I657gZ 

Cover: A luscious gothic with damask wallpaper, a gilded mirror, candles, jewelry, and the most beautiful letter-formed scrolling and adorned script font ever. Very western gothic looking, all candle flame and smoke, I want this book. 

Mrs. Mina Braithwaite has never quite fit into Mydalla's polite society. Her features are so different from the other noblewomen, more like the city's foreign workers, and she chafes at all the rules. Then there's the furious entity that has followed her for years, crawling from shadows to hurt her and staining every memory with fear. Desperate for help, Mina crashes a private gathering to see the infamous occultist Alexandre DuMort in action. She doesn't expect the pull of attraction towards the man, nor his invitation to join him in his work.

But DuMort has enemies, dangerous ones, and they dog his steps as closely as Mina's entity does hers. Mina must choose between her old life, and the angry spirit that stalks her, or follow the famed occultist down a new path, where even worse things might haunt her.

Like the truth.

https://amzn.to/44xjqTn 

Cover: Multicolour oil or chalk pastel looking cover with a distinct Colour out of Space vibe or perhaps The Endless - lots of pink in the torn sky that shows a black expanse and a large supernova or eye all hovering over a rural or parkland landscape. The narrow sans serif font in lime green is hard to read. 

Caleb and Marley's first mistake was stumbling into the gruesome sacrifice to the grinding wheel and its gods. Their second was enjoying the benefits it gave them. Now, one of them can't get enough, and the other just can't get out. Nothing can ever stop the wheel.

https://amzn.to/3ZW0nka 

Cover: Nice tritone in black and red and blue. Font-forward with the title in white and the rest in black. A silhouette mansion in the sunset. Seems we have moved into a silhouette trend. 

Silent film star Venita Rost's malevolent spirit lurks spider-like in her cliffside mansion, a once-beautiful home that's claimed countless unlucky souls. And she's not alone. Snared in her terrible web, Inspector Bartholomew Sloan―her eternal nemesis―watches her wreak havoc in helpless horror, shackled by his own guilt and Venita's unrelenting wrath.

Now the house has yet another new owner. This time it's Ronnie Mitchell, a grieving woman who buys the run-down place sight unseen. She arrives armed with an unexpected inheritance, a strong background in renovation, and a blissful ignorance regarding the house's blood-soaked history. But her arrival has stirred up more than just dust and decay. In the shadows, unseen eyes watch. Then, a man comes knocking. He brings wild stories and a thinly veiled jealousy, as well as a secret connection to the house that can only lead to violence.

https://amzn.to/3G6XTIZ 

Cover: This has an Altered States look to it for some reason, or the Entity - a silhouetted person presses through a filmy substance, as if from behind a screen. Oranges and reds with black text, but stark white for the micro-serif title. 

Anita Walsh, still reeling from her husband's sudden death, finds herself haunted not only by grief, but his Negative Image, a new phenomenon where the deceased prey on those they loved in life, turning intimate memories into nightmares. This spectral figure uses their shared past as a weapon, systematically dismantling her friendships, career, and self-worth. Desperate for escape, Anita plunges into a quest to sever the ghostly bonds that tie her to her tormentor.

As society grapples with the rising terror of NIs, a charismatic extremist proposes a radical solution to isolate the haunted from the unafflicted, gaining dangerous followers. Anita, alongside another victim of this spectral affliction, must navigate their personal hauntings and societal threats to prevent the breakdown of their community.

https://amzn.to/3SqyOeB

Cover: duo-tone cerulean cyan with red. A rabbit in silhouette exploding with inky flowers resembling a circulatory system. Interesting, but tells me little, but similar to the cover of the book Grey Dog in a way which I loved. White serif font gives this a western feel. 

The town of Blacknot is not what it appears, and a place on its desolate edge known only as The Night House is calling...

What remains of Jesse’s mother can fit inside an old jerky tin. Photos, postcards, a single, worn-out bracelet. But nothing that can explain why she was found dead eighteen years earlier on the bank of a river, her infant son left wailing by her side. When Jesse starts to receive anonymous messages promising him answers, he returns home to the regressive town of Blacknot, North Carolina so that his lifelong obsession can finally be laid to rest.

https://amzn.to/4nrrPjx 

Cover: A black fig rotting with black hellebore flowers in an arched frame. Gothic inspired and lovely I am hoping this is the next trend in covers as it is wonderful to look at. Tells us little of the plot.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told after she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But the Institute is more than just a haven for monsters. On graduation day, the faculty embark on a ravenous rampage, feasting on their students. Trapped in the school’s cavernous library, Alessa and her surviving classmates must do something they were never taught: work together.

If they don't, this school will eat them alive...

https://ca01web.zoom.us/j/65695228712?pwd=8J8SM0KoPhNRpNIWRVbWkJDrj2Ba3L.1

https://amzn.to/3TYDau1 

Jeppo loathes his hometown and he can scarcely tolerate the townsfolk. Mostly, he despises his life as a gravedigger. He went to the Academy in the south, after all. He was never meant to take up his father’s shovel.

When a wicked sorcerer arrives at his gate demanding the bones of the local saint, Jeppo has no objection in principle. But he fears the wrath of the night hag, to whom he has been selling corpses for years.

Jeppo must choose the lesser of two evils, and do so quickly. The spiraling feud threatens to spill innocent blood … and worse still, his darkest secrets.

https://amzn.to/4nzWnj9 

On the first anniversary of his mother’s death, Teddy Doucet woke up outside the local cemetery.
He didn’t know how he got there or why his hands were dirty.

On the first anniversary of his mother’s death, Teddy Doucet woke up with something on his head.
It would not be removed and it demanded to be fed.

Over time, the Toad’s appetites became stranger, and as Teddy struggled to feed it, he began to suspect it would never truly be satisfied.

https://amzn.to/44tfvqq 

Cover: The paperback is more striking with black sans serif font over a halftone explosion featuring a single white feather in the centre. Owes to the double entendre of the title. 

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

https://amzn.to/44nXQQY 

Cover: Art deco text in lilac over a photographic image is always a little discordant. Pleasing sunset colours with a hint of blue sea, but it looks more like a romance cover oddly. 

Aubrey is drawn to abandoned places with hidden histories, and the Hotel Seabrink—a once-glamorous 1920s seaside retreat now slated for renovation—is the perfect subject to photograph. Locals whisper that it's haunted by the ghosts of two young women who died there, and when Aubrey visits to capture photos, she meets Dimitri Petroff, a minor online celebrity who shares her obsession with the site. The next day, Dimitri is found dead at the base of a cliff, and though police rule it an accident, rumors of murder and past deaths tied to the hotel compel Aubrey to investigate. As she uncovers the building’s roots as an asylum, Dimitri’s rivalries, and a decades-old unsolved murder with chilling similarities, it becomes clear someone will do anything to keep the hotel’s secrets buried.

https://amzn.to/4kbwqUd 

Cover: The cover is striking - a chained hand perhaps crushing or grasping an old plantation house with large sans serif text in what looks like Gill Sans. The style looks like acrylic paint so reminds me of the Ghanaian film posters but good - see Deadly Prey Gallery for more on those. 

In 1710 in the Province of Carolina, freedom feels impossible for Willie, his beloved Gertie, and their unborn child, as they suffer under the brutal rule of plantation master James “Big Jim” Barrow. Escape means certain death—until one night, Willie is offered a terrifying hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave from the Kingdom of Ghana and the last of the Ramanga, a nearly extinct African vampire tribe. Rafazi, driven by a centuries-old hunger to restore his lost power, sees in Willie a willing subject to be turned and used in a bloody revolt against their oppressors. As Rafazi builds an army of blood slaves bent on revenge, Gertie grows fearful of the dark legacy driving them forward. But Willie, determined to end the cruelty that has plagued his people, believes only evil can fight evil—and when Gertie stands in the way of the Ramanga’s return, he must choose between love and vengeance, knowing one thing for certain: blood will spill.

https://amzn.to/43Fsk0m

Cover: Distressed paperback look of a swirling cosmos in white on black. Yellow sans-serif font is set off nicely by this simplicity. 

A man lying in a bed of pain flees from physical torment into his own memories, and into speculations about life and reality. He was, once, employed by the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank pursuing research that ranges from occult studies to advanced physics, including black holes—or, as they are known in string theory, black branes.

https://amzn.to/4l9PNOf

Cover: A strange looking person simultaneously vomiting and being choked by filmstrip. Weird white bleeding eyes with weird smoky blue test fo the title. Looks like a manga cover. 

The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her—and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

https://amzn.to/4l4wOUU

Cover: Striking large block letters surround an eye through shattered glass - the glass reflects a cloudy blue sky. 

On a clear October day, pilots across the U.S. refuse to fly after eerie late-night calls from their mothers—some of whom are dead. As authorities scramble for answers, sixteen-year-old Charlie spots a strange balloon near her coastal Maine home, unaware her town is tied to a Cold War secret. In 1962, physicist Martin Hazelton uncovered something deadly. Now, the past and present collide in a race to stop what’s coming.

https://amzn.to/4lND2d8

Cover: A very busy cover showing a likely dead guy with vapours rising from his eyes and a television tuned to static - all greens and blacks with yellow sans-serif text. Neat looking. 

The monster that is Haunted Reels has returned, and now no one is safe. Featuring twenty-four brand-new, never-before-published stories by a mix of Hollywood legends and rising film-industry stars, Haunted Reels 2 continues the menace its brooding predecessor started, only this time it has a grudge. Beware the murderous vandals, maniacal crackpots, and diabolically possessed contained within these pages, for once you let them loose, there’s no telling what they’ll do next.

https://amzn.to/44UBsjK

Cover: A woman looks back toward a stone wall that is crowned by a giant skull, flanked by handprints. Plain serif font in white. Very neat! 

A garishly painted figurine contains a terrible curse; the ten-year anniversary of a sensational horror film shot in an abandoned mine reveals stunning secrets; endnotes for a book review uncover a strange high-tech pathogen; a man witnesses something uncanny and unexplained as his friend succumbs to a watery death; a seasick woman aboard a ferry is pursued by a barnacle-covered specter; a professor reveals the mysterious connection between Joseph Conrad and Peter Pan; a man encounters the ghost of his lost sister in a liminal space between the land and sea; an academic meets a mythical creature on a mysterious island.

https://amzn.to/479ksHT

Cover: Clashing cyan text on bright orangish-red showing a simple pram with tentacles reaching forth. Perfectly normal. Nothing weird about this at all except using cyan on red. 

Thea’s third pregnancy felt normal—until baby Lucia arrived with a full set of teeth, a wicked glint in her eye, and an insatiable hunger. When Lucia points to her brother and says, “I eat,” Thea isn’t sure if she should be horrified or proud. As Lucia grows, so do strange memories from Thea’s past. Her daughter wants to devour the world—and Thea might just let her. A darkly funny tale of motherhood, memory, and monstrous appetite.

https://amzn.to/4l1t32F

Cover: Opaled green and blue flies crawl around a dark rosary on a red background - it is entwined around gorgeous white calligraphic block letters. Striking! 

When her daughter Dylan begins having violent, unexplainable fits, Brigid—gay single mom and lapsed Catholic—starts to fear a dark family history is repeating. Desperate, she returns home to the last person she ever wanted to see: her uncle, Father Angus, who once performed an exorcism on another troubled girl. But as secrets unravel, Brigid learns the truth may be worse than demons—and going home might have put them both in greater danger.

https://amzn.to/40HD0LA

Cover: A person in silhouette stands dwarfed by a massive ice wall. The blood red font in wild scratches for the 'cherry' part of the title and black sans serif for the rest. Interesting, and I wonder if cherry means fresh or easy here. 

Documentarist Ezra Montbanc thinks he's hit the jackpot when he receives an invitation to document the rites of a mysterious, hitherto unknown tribe: the Winoquin, who reside in the harrowing, inhospitable Arctic.

It's a shot at the prestigious journalism career he's long envisioned, and a path out from the borderline-exploitative series detailing the celebrations of Indigenous tribes he's been mired in with his life and filmmaking partner, Stu.

Buzzing with possibility, Ezra and his crew depart for the home of the Winoquin, only to find themselves in a frozen and bloody battle for survival atop an inaccessible glacier ritual site, where men and mythical horrors hunger for sacrifice.

https://amzn.to/4msoFep

Cover: a yellow border and pink sans-serif text surround a photo of a person manipulated to appear as if it si dripping like paint along the midway point. Very odd, very effective.

A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.

https://amzn.to/3IUX6M7

Cover: a proken pencil bleeds in the centre, and large serif block letters for the cover. The background is the white of a blank page of paper making the red and orange stand out nicely. 

When her sister Deidre falls into a coma with a strange skin condition, Jewel steps in—and discovers an unfinished manuscript. A writer herself, Jewel offers to complete it, but the story is deeply unsettling. As strange events mirror the manuscript’s grisly plot, Jewel’s skin begins to itch, the word count rises on its own, and her thoughts turn dark. Did the story drive Deidre mad? And what will happen if she wakes up?

https://amzn.to/41d1mNi

Cover: The cover is a suicide king card with the top looking fairly normal yet ghoulish but the inverted version looking quite supernatural! Pinks and greens for the sans serif font make the cover quite flashy. 

Four years ago, the Low-Probability Event killed eight million people—strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. Luck was unpredictable. Vera, a former probability professor, sees chaos. When Special Agent Layne arrives to investigate a statistically impossible casino, he needs Vera to link its success to those deaths. She’s the world’s defense against another deadly improbability.

https://amzn.to/40KUPt1

Cover: Hyper neon pink with a red mouth, pouty woman's lips bitten and bleeding - it is striking with black Helvetica for the title and red for the rest. 

When four isolated elderly people die back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn't understand why she's the only one at her precinct that seems to care. But her colleagues at the police force dismiss the case as a series of unfortunate suicides due to the patients' loneliness. But Su-Yeon doesn't have the privilege of looking away: her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.

As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Violette at the crime scene. Violette claims to be a vampire hunter, searching for her ex-lover, Lily, and is insistent that a vampire is behind the mysterious deaths. Su-Yeon is skeptical at first, but when a fifth victim jumps from the window, her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Violette's explanation-that something supernatural is involved.

https://amzn.to/4oxirvF

Cover: Very simple and effective - black on a red background is the image of a person projectile vomiting black from the bottom of the cover upward to distressed white sans serif all cap text. 

In the NICU, she holds the most fragile lives in her hands. But something inside her is breaking. She's only twenty-four, but between the drugs, the impulsive hookups, and the growing paranoia, her life is unraveling fast. All she knows is that it feels good. Powerful. Like a new version of herself is taking shape. And when it does, people are going to die. Eradicator is American Psycho meets The Fly.

https://amzn.to/46vj4PE

Cover: Very colourful image of a woman's bleeding hand reaching through a flower garden in close up with a mansion on a hill looming in the background. Flanked on the sides by bluebells, it remonds me of dutch hex sign florals and colours. The font is a tall narrow but wide micro-serif. 

Carigara, 1986. Josephine del Rosario is the town pariah, left destitute after her parents were assassinated, and destined to marry a man twice her age.

So when Hiraya Ranoco, an old friend, offers Josephine an escape, she can't say no. All she needs to do is spend one night in the Ranoco’s home and play a children’s game of hide and seek. If she wins, she can have anything she wants. Even, perhaps, Hiraya’s heart.

But the manor is sprawling and nightmarish, crawling with insects and rotting from the inside out. The servants stand silently in corners and won't meet her eye. Worst of all, the house itself seems to want to trap Josephine. She must stay hidden until morning, but can she make it through the night?

https://amzn.to/45sTnhw

Cover: A 50s cartoon version of a vampire lesbian adorns the cover complete with bats and a cloud covered moon. The text is a mix of old sttle and thin sans serif for the long title. 

Beyond the Lesbian Vampire is a groundbreaking dive into the pervasive archetype of the violent lesbian, examining this historically problematic figure within cultural and cinematic imagination – from witch to vampire to murderer – and identifying her resurgence in seven critically acclaimed queer horror films of the late 2010s. Each case study depicts multidimensional lesbian characters trending toward more justifiable narrative reasons for violence. Additionally, this new iteration of the violent lesbian self-consciously references earlier portrayals, including her popular vampiric form, despite shedding her literal fangs. The combination of excessive citation alongside narrative shift gestures towards a reclamation of the violent lesbian within queer horror. The author weaves textual analysis and scholarly debates around assimilation and the legibility of lesbianism’s queerness to reveal the cultural salience of the violent lesbian, and of the queer and lesbian fears and pleasures she evokes. Beyond the Lesbian Vampire is a vital contribution to lesbian studies, horror studies, queer studies and feminist studies.

https://amzn.to/4535h1H

Geraldine Borden has realized that there's one thing her bottomless wealth can't grant her: children. When an attempt to remedy her infertility fails, she's left with nothing but rage, jealousy, and a murderous idea. She aims to take a place that all children adore and transform it into a twisted arena of carnage. And while her true masterpiece is still under construction, she seeks to entertain herself with a crude prototype filled with barbaric backyard games.

Several children from a small New England city have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. This group of kids—who once believed fractured family and teen angst were their toughest battles—now have a whole new set of problems. With no parents to guide them, will the children thrust into Geraldine's nightmare world have the grit and determination to escape? Or will they fall victim to their sadistic captor?

https://amzn.to/459BLpG

Cover: Red micro-serif gothic font very large on black - it is all type and no images. Bold!

Since its initial publication in 1978, The Stand has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, with millions of copies sold and adapted twice for television. Although there are other extraordinary works exploring the unraveling of human society, none have been as influential as this iconic novel—generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters.

Featuring an introduction by Stephen King, a foreword by Christopher Golden, and an afterword by Brian Keene. Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.

https://amzn.to/4l1qcXv

Cover: A champagne glass in cut crystal is full of blood with a cute batsy olive spear. In case you wondered, it does say a vampire novel in lipstick style scrawl. 

Sloane’s birthday getaway with her wild best friend Naomi is supposed to be relaxing—a break from her husband’s infidelity and her own discontent. But Naomi has other plans. One wild night with mysterious strangers turns horrifying, leaving the women changed forever. As they face bloody, eternal consequences, Sloane must confront her life, her choices, and what it really means to start living—no matter how dark the path to satisfaction becomes.

https://amzn.to/477CvOz

Cover: Really nice gothic oil paint style here with muted natural colours of ochre and umber depicting a woman standing in what looks like a cell but is liekly a modest bedroom. Lovely tall serif font with wide downstrokes. 

In 1765, Alba flees the plague with her parents and fiancé to his family’s remote mine—but safety turns to terror. Plagued by hallucinations and violent fits, she feels something dark growing inside her. Elías, her fiancé’s cousin, tries to ignore his attraction to her—but can’t ignore her unraveling. As they’re drawn into secrets, demons, and forbidden desires, they realize one of these forces will destroy them both.

https://amzn.to/4obdMiN

Cover: A house on the cover looking creepy with red smoke billowing around it at night - semi-faded white block letters for the title look ghostly on the mostly black background. Effective!

Isla Hansen, a mother reeling from a devastating loss, is beside herself when a mysteriously orphaned child appears on the outskirts of the Hansens’ secluded Colorado property. Although strange and unexplainable, the child’s presence breathes new life into Isla. But as the child settles in, Isla’s husband, Luke, and their five children notice peculiarities that hint at something far beyond the ordinary—anomalies that challenge the very fabric of reality itself. The tension within the Hansen household grows, and with it, the sense that there is something very wrong with the new kid in the house.

https://amzn.to/4fmmNS8

Cover: Delightful! Popcorn creates the face of, well, Ghostface, and it is on a black background. The fonts are on point (no pun intended) with red sans serif that drips blood and red handscrawl that evokes hastily penned letter to victims. Nice!

In Your Favorite Scary Movie, entertainment journalist Ashley Cullins examines the making and impact of the Scream films with behind-the-scenes insight from cast, creators, and crew, as well as sharp analysis on how the movies’ special blend of gruesome violence and humorous self-awareness rewrote the horror playbook. This intimate and thorough history includes brand-new interviews from Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Kevin Williamson, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jack Quaid, Parker Posey, Hayden Panettiere, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Radio Silence, Roger L. Jackson, and so many more.

https://amzn.to/4l7S7VR

Cover: Lovely old fairlytale look of a woman fleeing a burning mansion in a woodcut style. The title is a mix of wild scratching and old style serif - all cream and ochre on black - just lovely. 

Horror fans will be delighted to discover a whole new list of horror recommendations all by women writers. Taking a cue from the popular practice of mood reading, the most common requests she gets on social media, and the overwhelming positive reaction to the icons included in her first book, Sadie has carefully curated and organized her 200+ recommendations into reading lists based on "vibes".

https://amzn.to/4lXoY0R

Cover: Red on black fine woodcut or printmakers block style image of a fox with large whit block text that should disrupt the whole thing but ties it together with a little texture. Really nice high key stuff here.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

https://amzn.to/40MSeim

Cover: An oddly easter-like pink and blue cover with what looks like fangs or horns? Again with the slab-serif font. 

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.

https://madnessheart.press/product/pins/?v=5435c69ed3bc

Cover: Love this new cover! A pole dancer on a black background weilds a severd leg. Lovely. Pink neon for the font gives a very bowling-alley-strip-bar feel. 

Tired of school, work, and her dead-end relationship, Birdie wants out—just not into pageants or food service. So she takes a job dancing at PINS, a strip club-slash-bowling alley, and soon finds herself questioning everything, including her sexuality. Life is a blur of sex, drugs, and gutter balls—until someone starts killing the dancers. Now, Birdie and her friends must fight to stay alive, using whatever weapons they’ve got, from stilettos to sheer grit. PINS is a glitter-drenched, blood-soaked tale of self-discovery and survival from three-time Bram Stoker Award nominee Jessica McHugh.

Also from Madness Heart Press:

The Revised Anarchist’s Kosher Cookbook
Unsettling Horror in Anti-Bigotry Splatterpunk Environments

https://amzn.to/4ofDvq0

Cover: A black monotone image of a house door hanging open on red with white blackletter text. Very neat! Enticing and a scene from the book, so even better. 

After returning to his hometown, Paul, the beleaguered host of a small-time podcast, discovers a longtime friend committed suicide in the dilapidated ruins of Paul’s childhood home. Desperate to find answers, Paul interviews friends and locals hoping to find closure. He finds himself in a chilling downward spiral of his memories and the land he grew up on. Has his past caught up with him or is there something far more sinister at play?

https://amzn.to/41hRGB7

Cover: Creepy island shot from the sea in purples and greens with bold orange text for the title in wide sans-serif. Looks like a beachy thriller!

Ruth, the sole survivor of a notorious cult, joins a luxury influencer event on Prosperity Island hoping to stay invisible. But the island hides a violent history tied to her past. As party games turn deadly and guests begin to vanish, Ruth must confront buried secrets to survive. What was meant to be five days of sun and fun quickly descends into horror. Trapped with hundreds of others, she realizes this paradise might be a carefully staged nightmare.

https://amzn.to/46CqLUm

Cover: Blue and red duotone cover showing a blue door to what almost looks like a cold cellar. Blocky slab-serif font makes it look like a text book but it works.

Jasmina has been hired by her maybe-boyfriend to restore his family home, a grubby, abandoned time capsule where a great artist once lived. As she moves from room to room – scrubbing, scraping, plastering over cracks – the stories inhabiting them awaken, and the lives of the women who came before her begin to overlap with her own. Who is the woman in the photograph? And what secrets linger in that last locked room?

https://amzn.to/45drybY

Cover: Beautiful but interesting to describe - a black creepy tree on red that grows into a human skeletal shape - bold thick sans serif in white works well. 

When Jodi, BB, and Matt break into a crumbling country house for a dare, they stumble into a dark legacy of curses and hidden motives. One of them isn’t just there for thrills. Meanwhile, Lem is determined to end his family’s two-century curse by reuniting strange relics. As their paths collide on stormy Crow Island, they must ask: can belief in a curse make it real?

https://amzn.to/4l6BpWS

Cover: Very unique bloodstain painting on flesh colour like the blood art of Christian Baloga - a woman's face with strong sans-serif type works perfectly. It is beautiful and visceral. 

Birdie lost everything when her son died. Now, on track to rebuild her life, she has to evade her abusive partner Russ's rage and manipulations while also worrying about a home-invading serial killer that has descended on her community. Told through multiple POVs, from a decomposing murder victim to Birdie's day-to-day battle with domestic violence and grief to the horrific crimes of the killer, Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day will shock, disgust, and break your heart as the dark secrets unfold and Birdie does whatever she feels is necessary to protect the ones she loves. ​

https://amzn.to/47951PX

Cover: Nice! The cover tells the story, a child in silhouette reflected in a pond where you see he is flanked by two adults in the reflection only. Eerie. Black on read with a queasy green Gill sans-serif font.

When a plane crashes, only one passenger survives—two-year-old Ethan. Orphaned, he’s placed in the care of family friends Matthew and Nicole. From the afterlife, Ethan’s parents, Tag and Amanda, watch as addiction, money trouble, and media attention begin to unravel the life they hoped he’d have. Amanda’s grief twists into obsession. She decides Ethan belongs with her—and plans to take him, even if it means ending his life. When she learns to possess the living, only Tag can stop her. To save his son, he may have to risk losing them both forever. Some parents can’t let go… even in death.

https://amzn.to/4l3gK5W

I love this cover - red and beige on black, it is a silhouette of a woman walking past a pine forest and a blood-red mountain in the background. Simple, lovely. It has a kindlepreneur title so that was off-putting. 

Rebecca is back from the dead—confused, starving, and desperate to find her daughter. In the wilderness, she meets two strange boys who call her Moonflower and promise safety if she follows. But these brothers aren't lost children—they’ve been dead for thirty years and have chosen a path of blood and brutality. As Rebecca follows their trail west, her hope turns to horror. Meanwhile, FBI agent Sarah is chasing Rebecca, haunted by her partner’s death and searching for answers. What she finds leads back to a dark secret buried deep within the Bureau itself. Not everyone stays dead—and not all come back the same.

https://amzn.to/4fck90Y

Cover: Black framing a white and yellow staircase labyrinth similar to and Escher print. Very neat! A serif font like Trajan keeps everything simple.

Catabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.

Two academic rivals from Cambridge must travel to hell to rescue the soul of their advisor. Getting there was easy. Surviving it - and each other - is another thing entirely.

https://amzn.to/45d67rj

The Winslow Farm is a dying slice of Americana. Run by the “Princess of Pork,” Beulah Belle Winslow, the farm has seen better days. Along with her deformed daughter Hattie, Beulah performs unspeakable acts to keep the farm running. But will they be able to keep their dark secrets hidden, or will the sins of the farm be thrust into the light?

Davey is a scumbag, and his father makes sure he knows it. With the threat of jail looming, he needs to secure a job to keep his probation officer off his case. When Davey takes a farmhand job at the Winslow Farm, he soon realizes jail might not be the worst fate.

https://johnskipp.bigcartel.com/product/this-is-splatterpunk-the-john-skipp-primer-signed-paperback 

Inside you’ll find 15 of Skipp’s most powerful, passionate, unbridled, and influential splatterpunkian short stories, from his early years in Twilight Zone magazine to the present day.

Skipp also includes a definitive essay on the history and core elements of the movement — which he defines more as a “spontaneous eruption of the arts” — with additional notes on each story, for context.

https://amzn.to/4ndy21V 

Cover: An anatomical man, skinless, steps lightly across a sea-foam green backdrop of roses, yarrow or allium, and batwings. What colour font? Yellow. A nicely stylized yellow serif font-cum-letterforms. Really lush! 

Frankenstein, Germany. 

Ambrose, a young vampire, lives a life secreted away from the modern world with the rest of his clan, all of them under the spell of the charismatic Regina, who spins stories of salvation for their kind. Their grand plan? To build makeshift wings and fly to the moon where a safe haven awaits for all vampires. 

But Ambrose harbours a secret: he is not ready to abandon the earth, and he is in contact with a human who believes he can be saved. As the rest of his kind prepare to flee their home, Ambrose is torn between loyalties. 

However something else is on the horizon. The Royal Diurnal Society – a group with sinister plans for vampires – are closing in, and if Ambrose isn’t careful, he could find himself at the centre of a terrifying and mysterious experiment.

https://amzn.to/41xiE8d 

Cover: woodcut of white on beige giving an autumn look with old english style text and pumpkins. 

In the flickering candlelight of pitchy Autumn nights, malevolent spirits crowd the gloom and weird, terrible things come to pass. Ever since the days of the druidic Samhain, storytellers have observed the tradition of spinning tall, twisted tales of dark magic, spectral stalkings and unearthly creatures to mark this festival’ s uniquely frightening aura. Collecting up a haunting haul of tales and a handful of weird seasonal poetry from across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this new volume celebrates the riotous weird of the Halloween season through the works of legendary ghost story writers such as Edith Wharton alongside rare literary treats, rediscovered by Johnny Mains and returning to print for the first time since their original publication.

https://amzn.to/3JHNzbE 

A horror anthology edited by the genre’s greatest, Ellen Datlow, with one side featuring stories about what haunts the night while the other side showcases the terrors that can exist in the light of day in this new addition to the Saga Doubles series.

This anthology contains stories from some of the most evocative and bestselling writers of horror and speculative fiction.

Night—Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror

Trash Night by Clay McLeod Chapman
We Take Off Our Skin in the Dark by Eric LaRocca
The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones
At Night, My Dad by Dan Chaon
The Night House by Gemma Files
The Night-Mirrors by Pat Cadigan
Fear of the Dark by Benjamin Percy
The Picknicker by Josh Malerman
Secret Night by Nathan Ballingrud

Day—Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight

The Bright Day by Priya Sharma
Faire by Rachel Harrison
Trick of the Light by Brian Evenson
One Day by Jeffrey Ford
The Wanting by A.T. Greenblatt
Hold Us in the Light by A.C. Wise
Dismaying Creatures by Robert Shearman
Bitter Skin by Kaaron Warren
Cold Iron by Sophie White

https://amzn.to/4mDX5Lr 

Cover: spider web and red lettering in serif letterforms - so simple and I love it

Ellie Isles first became obsessed with the I-64 murders when she saw her own face on one of the victims. Identical to every detail, the woman wasn’t her, but she could have been. Compelled to discover the story of her dopplegänger’s death, Ellie wrote a bestselling true crime book about the serial killer, dubbed “the Spider.”

Four years later, the Spider remains uncaught, his body count climbing, and many victims unidentified. Ellie and her online network build a massive database to track those at risk of becoming Jane and John Does, hoping to give them names. After identifying multiple victims, Ellie is recruited by police—and when her therapist is arrested, she becomes more determined than ever to help stop the Spider.

https://amzn.to/41vnCCh 

This new collection of horror short fiction weaves together contemporary Arctic settings with ancient monsters and mysterious beings that have been said to stalk the tundra for centuries. Featuring authors from across the Canadian Arctic, this new volume of Taaqtumi―an Inuktitut word that means “In the Dark”―reveals just how horrifying the dark can be.

Featuring new fiction from award-winning authors Aviaq Johnston, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley and Jamesie Fournier, as well as new voices in the genre, this collection is perfect for any horror lover.

https://amzn.to/4g3B9ai 

Cover: Gilt embossed spires in a gothic style. I looks more like a storybook than text book, but it works. Gold on midnight blue, a common colour combination for this sub-genre. 


Twelve original dark academia stories from bestselling thriller writers – imagine darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, the tang of autumn in the air… and the rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder.

Featuring stories from: Olivie Blake, Genevieve Cogman, Ariel Djanikian, Elspeth Wilson, MK Lobb, Jamison Shea, Kate Alice Marshall, Erica Waters, De Elizabeth, Taylor Grothe, Kit Mayquist, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.

https://amzn.to/4n7ZUnT 

Cover: A raven perches on a fence post in the dark countryside - fields roll under a stormy sky with the title in a tall black Sigurd serif and the authors name (who is me, interestingly) in grey Futura sans serif. 

He could not remember a thing, who he was or where he came from.

Flashes come, like distant lightning. A song, an abandoned house of isolated opulence, and visions of the undead... Then he meets a girl, the only person who recognizes him, her body marked with hundreds of scars. Gunnar, a new breed of warlock, isn't sure if the police want him after finding his landlord's body but runs anyway. He is led to the old house on Black River Road where memories come clearer and more disturbing. Memories of blood, vampires, and the one who forced this dark world upon him. Worst of all, he remembers how easily he embraced that darkness

https://amzn.to/45LsMfW 

Cover: A woman's hand holding a mud puppy or axylotyl under the hem of a white dress? I am not sre what is happening but I love the white font on black! A stylized serif with flourishes. 

25 stories: A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one.
From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own.

https://amzn.to/45ThCpH 

Cover: A special edition featuring what looks like gilt silver and god framing a step back of a painting by Henry Fuseli, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft. 

Coral and Allan Clarendon have just moved to the seaside town of Barnwall with their young son Dean. If an uncommon number of children have died unnaturally in Barnwall throughout history, surely Dean must be safe with his parents. Could their house be a source of peril? Allan and Coral seem to think so, since they call for an exorcism. Allan’s father Thom believes his wife is wrong to think the ceremony has left Dean in worse danger. But if she’s alone in seeing the terrors that are gathering around him, how desperate will her solution have to be?

https://amzn.to/3UVP8Fs 

Cover: An orange to black gradient features a ribbon of highway floating through a skulls open mouth. Stark calligraphic block text finishes off a highly graphic yet balanced cover.

It’s the winter of 1975, and Portland, Oregon, is all sleet and neon. Duane Minor is back home after a tour in Vietnam, a bartender just trying to stay sober; save his marriage with his wife, Heidi; and connect with his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, now that he’s responsible for raising her. Things aren’t easy, but Minor is scraping by.

Then a vampire walks into his bar and ruins his life.

When Minor crosses John Varley, a killer who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon, Varley brutally retaliates by murdering Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. What’s left of their splintered family is united by only one desire: vengeance.

https://amzn.to/4g2JlYn 

Cover: a heraldic unicorn in red drips blood. plain red and black microserif font on a white rough paper background.

Angelina Yves is a struggling singer/songwriter offered the chance of a lifetime to join the experimental luxury compound sponsored by the most famous band in the world, Black Idyll. With her every need accommodated, she finally has the time and space to perfect her music. Her muse? Reclusive rock star Jesper Idyll, who lives up to her every high school daydream. But this paradise has a haunted underbelly heralded by screaming horses, mysterious figures in the night, and dreams too twisted to be real. When people start to disappear and Jesper's ex turns up dead and hideously mutilated, Angelina begins to suspect that something malevolent lurks behind the cult that's grown around the band...

https://amzn.to/4mNDFnI

Cover: A black devil tail wrapped around a purple victorian mansion. Plain but works, uses the Rachel Harrison font, a thick microserif with stylized pointyness. 

Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After her parents’ divorce, her mother Alex moved Clio and her sisters into a home she claimed was occupied by a demon—a belief that cost Alex custody. Years later, after Alex’s sudden death, the house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where they see trauma, Clio sees content, until the renovation stirs something sinister. As memories return and her mother’s book reveals dark truths, Clio must face the terrifying possibility that her mother was right all along.

https://amzn.to/4nagyU3 

Cover: An oil painging in a gilded frame drips blood - off centre on a white background. Black thick serif text remind me of late 70s horror. 

Art has always been an escape for struggling painter Lewis Dixon. But other than his mom, who has recently passed away, no one has ever praised his work. If he is being honest, there’s really no one in his life. So he is shocked when the British Museum shows an unusual interest in his art. Instead of a curated show, Lewis is tested: his fugue-like painting state is actually magic, letting him enter nine enchanted works created by his great-grandfather. These paintings, scattered worldwide, hold immense and dangerous power. Tasked with destroying them, Lewis joins alluring agent Noah Rao on a journey through black markets, cursed objects, and eldritch threats—forcing him to face both danger and his own loneliness.

https://amzn.to/3JzUILg 

Cover: Gilded borders surround a lush forest with columns creating an entrance way. White stylized serif text. Plain but fitting. 

As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the wood’s curse has plagued her village, but the Ozmini Church only comes to collect its tithe, not to protect heretics with false stories of monsters in the trees. So when a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes an impossible bargain with a zealot priest: bring the monster out, and her mother will be spared. In the woods, she meets not a beast but a disgraced golem who agrees to take the blame if Malka helps free her imprisoned creator. Yet bargains unravel, and protecting her people may mean risking both her mother and her heart.

https://amzn.to/3HAJxRW 

Cover: An off-white soft-serif and rough edged font tothe titel entined in creepy trees flanking a forest path. Love this. Woody browns, mossy greens.

Seven years ago, Jen Monroe left behind her hometown of Barrow, Washington after her father, a forest ranger passionate about protecting old trees from the aggressive logging business that runs their small town, vanished seemingly into thin air. She vowed never to return...until she gets a text from her estranged mother. Her father's remains have been found.

It seems impossible to Jen who has always believed her father is still alive, and she returns home, determined to find out what really happened. When her ex-boyfriend proposes a camping trip into the woods in her father's memory, it feels like the opportunity Jen had been hoping for: to find her father. To find the truth.

https://amzn.to/41A0XER 

Cover: An Edward Gorey looking cover of black on orange of little wooden coffins in a pattern with little churches and buildings with a grand old english font. 

The lives of those residing in the isolated town of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire, are forever altered after three faceless entities arrive on Christmas morning to perform a brutal act of violence—a senseless tragedy that can never be undone. While the townspeople grieve their losses and grapple with the aftermath of the attack, a young teenage boy named Rupert Cromwell is forced to confront the painful realities of his family situation. Once relationships become intertwined and more carnage ensues as a result of the massacre, the town residents quickly learn that true retribution is futile, cruelty is earned, and certain thresholds must never be crossed no matter what.

https://amzn.to/45X4r5I 

Cover: Worms crawling around the white serifed and thick font on a black background. Very 70s and very effective. 

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

https://amzn.to/469S1HA 

Perverts is a provocative, darkly comedic collection of interconnected stories set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in 2012, as the city burns. It pulls back the curtain on the secret lives of sexual deviants, abusers, addicts, and fame-chasers lurking in the shadows of the City of Angels. Each tale is boldly erotic and savagely satirical, exposing the hollowness behind Hollywood’s glamour.

From a powerful Tinseltown predator spinning a web of exploitation, to a desperate addict in search of salvation, these stories paint a raw, unfiltered portrait of a city in collapse. Unapologetically transgressive yet wickedly witty, Perverts blurs the line between comedy and horror; you’ll find yourself laughing one moment and recoiling the next. The result is a searing satire of Los Angeles where the real monsters wear human faces.

https://amzn.to/4lWlb38 

In this haunting psychological horror, Willow’s life has become a fever dream, her days lost in a twisted loop where time no longer flows as it should. Is she held captive by her husband Liam’s iron rules—or by the insidious darkness of her own mind?

Her only connection to the world beyond her walls is a young girl named Sarah, whose unexpected visits to Willow’s garden spark a glimmer of hope. But as cracks form in her carefully controlled existence, horrifying truths seep through, twisting the familiar into something sinister. The floral wallpaper peels back to reveal haunting messages carved into the walls, and the house itself pulses with malevolent life.

https://amzn.to/4n3GpNi 

Cover: A futuristic red font over an orange misty background. A lone astronaut stands silhouetted in the centre od this bleak void. 

The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray—the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing.

In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories--especially their own--to get to the truth.

https://amzn.to/4lW90TR 

Cover: I love this. A shadowed widows walk victorian over a red to blue gradient sky. The white font over a black cloud is just perfect.  

The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed. At least that’s what patriarch Zef insists, raising his children to play their roles: heir Dardan, reluctant pawn Maris, and youngest Nora, meant to stay quiet. But when fortune shifts and the blessing begins to resemble a curse, the family fractures. Each schemes for survival, and as secrets unravel, the blood that built their empire may finally be their own.

https://amzn.to/47iVUMM 

Cover: A lot going on here. A creature with tusks looms over a gnarled tree, in front of which stands a teen girl in a skirt beckoning with smoke or magic (?) pouring out of her eyes? There is a lot of blue and purple with a similar chunky Cooper style rounded serif font in white. 

2009: Rachel Galloway is bored in class, sketching pigs and imagining a utopia where Burnskidde High’s horrors vanish. When classmates begin to believe her vision, she becomes the center of a rapidly spreading new religion, dividing the town. As rituals grow dangerous, Galloway struggles to discern reality and whom she can trust.

Ten years later: Rachel Durwood, a Renfield County Guard, follows a cryptic message to Burnskidde, now sealed off and preparing for a catastrophic rapture. Piecing together the fallout from 2009, she must navigate the town’s monstrous cult to save its people. Though separated by a decade, Galloway and Durwood may be closer than they realize—and together might stop Burnskidde’s doom.

https://amzn.to/47W0osV 

13 coming-of-rage stories the way only Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper can tell them—wildly inventive, brilliantly imaginative, and completely and utterly enthralling.

A vicious group of college upperclassmen prey on the freshman girls in “Why We Keep Exploding”; across the world, something is mutating adolescents into bizarre creatures in "The Turning"; a girl on a night out realizes a bizarre cop is hunting her in “The Long Flesh of the Law”; and in the acclaimed novella “Benny Rose, the Cannibal King”, a Halloween prank goes horribly wrong when a murderous ghost steps out of an urban legend and into the real world.

https://amzn.to/4fZesE0 

Cover: A ghostly hand appears trapped in an old 35mm camera lans. The camera lays on what loks like orange and black wallpaper or gaudy hotel carpet. Teal microserif text dominates and clashes gently with the orange. Neat! 

Henry Hotard was on the verge of fame, gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost-hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now, he's learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents’ care while he recovers. And he’s being haunted. His girlfriend Jade insists it’s trauma, but Henry knows the specter creeping closer each night is real. To banish it, he must face the events that led to his injury and the truth buried in his past. It all began the night he whistled at night...

https://amzn.to/45JXhTB 

Cover: A clawed hand reaches thorught hte veil - from blue to gold - reaching for a mani n the forest. The text is a solarized white sans serif and looks super cool! 

It begins at night. People vanish from parks and city streets. Then in broad daylight, they're dragged screaming into the woods, into the water, into the sky. People take refuge in their homes, but still the invisible creatures come, ripping people away from their horrorstruck loved ones. Spouses. Parents. Children. Nowhere is safe and no defense can stop them. Because nothing can save you from what you can't see.

High school teacher John Calhoun loses his son the first night. A day later, they take his wife. For two months, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter manage to survive, but in the end, she is abducted too. In John's darkest moment, he meets a motley group of survivors who have a secret: a near-fatal car accident has given one of them the ability to detect what normal human eyesight cannot.

https://amzn.to/4mK90aN 

Cover: This is my jam. A horse-headed winged beast lords over a cabin in the woods. It is all shadow and gloom and evil with beautiful type. The title is in light orange and a soft serif with the words 'of the' inset to the L of Devil - it all blends so artfully. 

1735. Leeds Point, New Jersey. A weary woman discovers she is pregnant with her thirteenth child. In a moment of despondence, she curses the unborn that it may be a devil. On the night the infant enters the world, no one in the room is left alive to recount the tale.

2005. Thirteen-year-old Patrick Shourds and his friend encounter a terrifying creature in the Pine Barrens. When only Patrick emerges from the woods alive, the residents of the small town blame and shun him. A pariah in his community, Patrick is ultimately driven away, vowing to never look back.

2025. Patrick reluctantly returns to Leeds Point after the death of his mother. Seeking to lay the ghosts of his past to rest, he soon discovers they refuse to go quietly. When a string of grisly events rock the small town, old suspicions resurface, and the residents again point their fingers at the prodigal son.

Patrick will learn that he can't run from the past. He'll have to confront his demons - the monster in the woods and the darkness that dwells within.

https://amzn.to/4g2ZcWR 

Cover features an Enochian-like hexagram with tangent lines converging on a white silhouette of a man. (thunderbolts and lightning very, very frightening) on various grey static backgrounds. Sans-serif fonts work well with this structured cover. 

Equal parts cosmic horror and existential thriller, Bram Stoker Award finalist Todd Keisling's genre-bending series The Monochrome Trilogy welcomed readers to the Monochrome-a nightmarish parallel reality fueled by the failures of humanity-and introduced the world to Donovan Candle, a modern everyman whose mid-life crisis and middle-class complacency endangers his existence.

What unfolds is a horrific journey of self-discovery, one that leads readers deep into the heart of the Monochrome where Donovan becomes a pawn in a centuries-long stalemate between two warring demigods who threaten the fabric of reality itself-and the lives of those he loves.

This omnibus edition collects the entire trilogy in one volume: A Life Transparent, The Liminal Man, and Nonentity, along with illustrations by Red Lagoe, a new foreword by Amelia Bennett, and a new afterword by the author himself.

https://amzn.to/4n9gRyb 

Cover: The cover features a leaf on a black background. In the leaf is a spooky illustration of the headless horseman, rearing on a hillside. The art is what you find in this gorgeous looking coffee table book. 

In October Shadows, artist John A. Rice brings to life classic ghost stories, using autumn leaves as his canvas. Each of the thirteen tales—by authors including Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, and Edith Nesbit—explores the unexplained and the macabre, tapping into our worst fears and the darker side of human nature while exploring the supernatural mysteries that connect all our lives. This is the perfect book for curling up in front of a fire on a chilly night, when the moon is high, the wind whispers in the trees, and ominous shadows lurk around every corner.

https://amzn.to/3HVEYBJ 

Cover: A skeleton caresses a woman in a woodland bog - all browns and creams with a yellow scrawled chalk font - very gorgeous illustration. 

It’s been three years since Mila Thomas’ brother Jed went missing, and she’s fled town, haunted by voices from the old family bog. When her sister Agatha disappears during graduation celebrations, Mila returns, finding the police and her mother helpless. She turns to the bog’s voices for guidance, only to discover something more sinister lurking beneath the waters. As bodies surface, Mila must confront her past with the reverend’s estranged son and unravel the family secrets tied to the town’s missing people.

https://amzn.to/461btGM 

Cover: A biodome in black on an orange background - the biodome is deteriorating in to tendris and tentacles. Lovely! Yellow sans serif font like many books we saw this summer. 

Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach.

When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it's there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.

https://amzn.to/4p2JA9K 
On a tiny, isolated island off the southern Alaskan coast, three girls have vanished without a trace, and Audra’s close friend—the island’s therapist—has been found murdered. A recent storm has severed all communication with the outside world, leaving Audra, the town's lead detective, trapped and at the head of a very personal case.

Her lead suspect, Valorie, the daughter of a notorious cult leader and the town's outcast, was discovered blood-covered and dazed at the crime scene. Valorie’s memory is a gaping void, a dark well hiding traumatic secrets, including the truth about the teenage kidnappings that haunt the island.

As Audra digs deeper into the town's twisted history, it becomes clear other murders on the island, dating back decades, might be connected. The clock is ticking for the missing girls, and every clue leads Audra to question even those she's known her whole life.

https://amzn.to/4lNtnCt 

Cover: A kabuki actor wearing a large crown of skulls stands on a stage flanked by spirits and mist - skulls float in the air around them. Large white serif text for both title and authors name works well on the black background.

Megan and her mom are on the run after narrowly escaping the clutches of an abusive man who dragged them from Portland to Beijing. With few options, Megan’s mom turns to an old friend who offers them room and board in Huihuang Opera Theater in exchange for cleaning the ancient building.

Between her rusty Mandarin and constant reminders that she’s an outsider, Megan struggles with loneliness—until she meets Kristy, the glamorous young lead in the operatic adaptation of “The Monkey King and the White Bone Demon”. Soon, Megan’s free time is split between reading a battered copy of the Chinese classic that inspired the opera and her budding new friendship; Kristy’s love of singing brings out Megan’s long-buried ambitions.

https://amzn.to/46ggX1w 

Cover: A side portrait of MrBallen himself surrounded by depictions of the stories contained within - a man on fire, a pile of skulls, and a snowy mountain peak. Classic John Allen. 

In MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live, John Allen, known popularly as “MrBallen,” is back with another heart-stopping collection of strange and mysterious stories exploring terrors that lie just beyond our comprehension. From skin-melting encounters in Brazil to a ghost that stalks the English countryside to a bell ringing deep in the Arizona wilderness, MrBallen’s spine-chilling tales—four of which are exclusive to this graphic novel—span multiple centuries and expose bizarre, terrifying, and utterly unforgettable experiences of the unnatural world.

Compellingly creepy, deeply researched, and based on unsettling real events, MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live proves that sometimes our deepest fears are about the things we cannot see. In collaboration with New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Robert Venditti and acclaimed comic book artist Andrea Mutti, this is Allen’s most frightening collection yet.

https://amzn.to/3K1ACJK 

Cover: The girl in the graveyard with the red NOTLD font - what more could you need. Anything else would just not work. 

The classic film that changed cinema by redefining horror and zombies forever. George A. Romero’s hit movie is reimagined in this novel by John Russo, the screenwriter of the beloved
flick.

While visiting their father’s grave, Barbara and Johnny see a man slowly approaching them.
Grotesque and ghost-pale, the man kills Johnny. Barbara manages to flee to a nearby
farmhouse, where others have gathered to escape the outbreak. This ragtag group hope to fend
off the horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls. Will any of them make it out alive?

https://amzn.to/4g31oh3 

Cover: I am not sure - it looks like a human arm glued under the arm of an easy chair. No one will ever suspect! Red serif text on a black background - I don't get ti but I like it! 

Husband and wife Bohumil and Bohumila, together with their son, move from Prague to a remote village with the hopes of salvaging their marriage. In the searing summer heat, they try to fit in with the villagers, only to be met with hostile stares and evasive lies. Each night, the couple hears what they suspect to be a large animal wandering around their cottage—an impression that oddly corresponds to the mysterious flyers found at the local watering hole regarding a wolfen fairytale. As inexplicable coincidences begin piling up, it’s clear something sinister is afoot.

After a drunken night out, Bohumil and Bohumila come home to find the house empty: their son is gone. After three days of searching, they find the villagers in festive costumes gathered outside their cottage. Is it a bizarre game, or some perverse, folkloric ritual? Are Bohumil and Bohumila in danger? And what has happened to their son?

https://amzn.to/4p3wYzk 

Cover: A distressed black silhouette of a knife raised in the air on an orange background. Yellow blocky narrow sans serif font, What more could you want for a slasher?!

Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home.

When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn’t too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age!

Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can’t help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister?

https://amzn.to/4mKLryD 

Midsommar meets The Final Girl Support Group in this horror novel about a woman who survived cult killings as a child and is striving to be "normal," but a spontaneous trip into the woods and the voices in her head keep pulling her to the dark side.

So what if Sadie hears talking dead animals and a strange, comforting male voice in her head? The therapist insists these are just symptoms of PTSD. It makes sense considering that she hid under the bed and watched as her best friends were slaughtered.

But the murders were seventeen years ago, back when her name was Sabrina. Now, she’s Sadie: a perfectly normal 29-year-old. She works as a physical therapist assistant and lifts weights with her boyfriend, Lucas, who’s the sweetest, most considerate man—as long as he’s not angry. But when Lucas spontaneously agrees to join a couples trip to a cabin in the woods, the visions get worse, a strange figure stalks her during the night, and that male voice in Sadie’s head keeps calling, asking her to do things she’s never fathomed.

https://amzn.to/3JF0ds2 

Cover: A large tree dominates, and in it's gnarled centre a road appears. Psychedelic colours dance on the grass beside it. Warbley white sans serif text blend over top. Neat! 

Ten years ago, Jorie Stroud was the rising star of the October Film Haunt – a trio of horror enthusiasts who camped out at the filming locations of their favorite scary movies, sharing their love through their popular blog. But after a night in the graveyard from Proof of Demons – perhaps the most chilling cult film ever made, directed by the enigmatic Hélène Enriquez – everything unraveled.

Now, Jorie has built an isolated life with her young son in Vermont. In the devastating wake of her viral, truth-stretching Proof of Demons blog entry ― hysteria, internet backlash, and the death of a young woman ― Jorie has put it all, along with her intense love for the horror genre, behind her.

https://amzn.to/4lWgR3N 

In seventeenth-century Denmark, unmarried noblewoman Christenze Kruckow and several other women are accused of witchcraft. They are rumoured to be possessed by the Devil, who comes to them in the form of a tall, headless man and gives them dark powers. It is said they perform unchristian acts and can steal people’s happiness, cause pestilence, illness, or even death. And once the rumour of witchcraft takes hold, they are all in danger of the stake.

Narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze one dark night in 1620, The Wax Child is an unsettling, dizzying horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of pre-modern Europe.

Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of infamous witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland. Full of lush, vivid storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn weaves in quotes from original sources, such as letters, court documents, magic spells, and Scandinavian grimoires.

https://amzn.to/3UUUMHL 

Cover: White background - to go with your black and red ones - of a bear skull entwined with branches. A vulture culture delight. White text over top with the most micro of micro serif, same as the other Tor Nightfire hardcovers. Perfection. 

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin―who went missing in that very mine―well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do...

https://amzn.to/4oWI7BP 

Cover: A grainy lighthouse is seen through a video transmission greenish white dotmatrix text sets off the oddity of the cover style. Like it! Priced too high though. 

Longtime residents of Harper’s Cove believe something is wrong with the Widow’s Point Lighthouse—cursed or haunted. Built in 1838, its history is marked by death: workers falling from heights, murders, suicides, disappearances, and even a Hollywood starlet’s unexplained death. Closed in 1988, the lighthouse remained untouched—until now. Told across 2017 and 2025, those who enter seeking proof of the supernatural find themselves trapped, discovering they are not alone. Father-and-son team Richard and W.H. Chizmar deliver a chilling ghost story that will make you reconsider what lurks in the dark.

https://amzn.to/471Iowh 

Sutter Cane's Most Anticipated Novel Has Arrived

In the Mouth of Madness is the long-lost novel fans have been waiting for.

Readers of his earlier book (The Hobbs End Horror, The Thing in the Basement, The Breathing Tunnel, Haunter in the Dark, The Feeding and The Whisperer of the Dark) will recognize his signature blend of psychological terror and cosmic dread.

Sutter Cane has always been a figure shrouded in mystery. Critics have called his writing "dangerously immersive" and "deeply infectious." Although sales records are incomplete or missing, many believe he has outsold every living author.

The story follows John Trent, an insurance investigator assigned to find Sutter Cane after his sudden disappearance. What begins as a simple missing person case soon spirals into a nightmare. Trent learns that Cane's fiction doesn't just reflect reality, it may shape it.

Will you read Sutter Cane?

From Fangoria: ...in a clever twist of horror metafiction, Echo On is treating the release as if Cane were real—though the novel was written by Christian Francis, Echo On's editor-in-chief, who has previously penned novelizations of Wishmaster, Session 9, and Vamp. 

https://amzn.to/46sWNS8 

Guitar strings made of human flesh, onstage antics involving genitals and fishhooks, angel wings painted on concert venue walls with arterial spray, songs that possess listeners and transform them into homicidal maniacs, crowd-surfing corpses, demonic crickets, drug-fueled musical performances played at inhuman speeds, and inverted cross disembowelments:

What do these things have in common?

They’re METAL AS FUCK! Duh.

Rotten Requiems brings together a supergroup of eight of the most exciting names in extreme horror and splatterpunk, with each author contributing a story that utilizes graphic, ear-raping, full-bore terror, augmenting a carefully curated symposium of sickness and showcasing just how heavy horror literature can get…

https://amzn.to/46N0ssT 

Ruth is trapped. She’s stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job at New Creations—a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in Kill Devil.

In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store—and attack her. As Ruth fights for her life using only the crafting supplies at hand, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her but the entire town.

https://amzn.to/3Wgp9ZL 

Her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.

The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine.

https://amzn.to/4nVEISz 

Patel and Pardoe Book 5 - A clergyman is murdered in his bed in the dead of night, triggering a chilling chain of events, each more bizarre and unnerving than the last – brutal killings, corpses vanishing, decomposed bodies digging their way out of graves.

These shocking events seem unconnected but, at each scene, people report witnessing swarms of flies – hundreds, thousands, even millions of them.

As DI Patel and DS Pardoe hunt for the mastermind behind these atrocious crimes, they are forced to ask: is this person human – or is all of this linked to the mysterious figure caught on CCTV, running at speed without moving its legs?

https://amzn.to/46C6PPu 

Lainey Taylor is being pushed to the brink by her alcoholic husband, Callum. Prone to hallucinations and erratic behavior, it’s only a matter of time before he puts Lainey’s life―and that of their daughter, Beatrix―in jeopardy. A divorce and full custody is out of the question. In Callum’s words: Over my dead body.

Lainey’s sympathetic friend Adelaide has a wild solution. They’ll stage a haunting so convincing it will drive Callum out of Lainey’s life for good. Nothing too over the top: strange smells, noises in the walls, and flies unleashed along the windowsills. It could work. Considering Callum’s alcohol-induced night terrors, he’s already close to broken. With each new scare, Lainey is closer to seeing the haunting through to its bitter, freeing end.

https://amzn.to/3Iytapn 

When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel’s older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel’s disappearance could be connected to other family tragedies. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family.

https://amzn.to/4o3y3G9 

In the titular Man, F*ck This House, Sabrina Haskins and her family have just moved into their dream home. At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren't what they seem. Sabrina is hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina's already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine. Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of this house, they're far from its only residents ...

Malevolent doppelgängers, bizarre murders, ancient evils, Western ghosts, mirror monsters, poisonous playthings, and more populate the pages of this brilliant--and petrifying--collection of stories.

https://amzn.to/4nrrWv3 

Writer Everly Bainbridge's life is left in ruins when her husband takes their child to the supermarket one day and a lorry collides with their car. After the accident, a lawyer appears on her doorstep and tells her her husband was not who he said he was and she is a very rich widow. She retreats to a lonely house in the countryside to recover. But there’s a well in the cellar, a spectacularly cold room, and one night, Everly wakes up with a foot hanging over the emptiness of the well and the echo of her daughter’s voice in her ears…

https://amzn.to/46NzjGi 

Lansdale mashes up crime, Gothic, mystery, fantasy, and science-fiction, filtered through a raw, violent world of dark humor and unique characters. Lansdale is one of the early American horror writers to portray racism not as abstract but as realistic, intimate, and impossible to ignore.

In Lansdale’s nightmarish visions, you’ll discover psychotic demon nuns, a psychopathic preacher, cannibals, 80-year-old Elvis, undead strippers, flying ghost fish, Elder Gods, possessed cars, and the worst evil of all: mankind.

Introduction by Joe Hill

https://amzn.to/4nxw78X 

Ford, Neuland and Tilda return home after the events of The Pale House Devil to try and make peace with the NYC crime syndicates. Then they’ll only be welcomed back if they take on a job for free – hunting down, and killing, The Flesh King, a gruesome killer who is stalking the city, leaving a macabre and bloody trail wherever he goes. Caught up in a twisted set of conspiracies and bloodletting, the monster hunters step up to do what they do best once more – take down the unstoppable evil.

https://amzn.to/4n22hbH 

Sam Vines is struggling. Her boat is up on the hard and she doesn’t have enough money to get her back in the water. Turns out the snorkelers and the scubadivers are looking for the ultra-luxury boating experience, not the single-handed, rarely sober, snarky stylings of sailboat captain Samantha Vines. So it’s a good thing when her former crewmate Loick asks her to help deliver a massive, hundred-year-old sailboat from Seattle to England. Sam is the only one who can handle the ship’s engine, and did Loick mention that the money is good? It’s very good.

The Blackwatch is a huge boat. An ancient boat. It’s also probably (definitely) haunted.

https://amzn.to/3INszjG 

Fever Dreams is the sixth volume in the non-themed horror series of original stories, showcasing the very best short fiction that the genre has to offer, and edited by Mark Morris. This new anthology contains 20 original horror stories, 16 of which have been commissioned from some of the top names in horror, and 4 selected from the hundreds of stories sent to Flame Tree during a short open submissions window. A delicious feast of the familiar and the new, the established and the emerging.

by Caolán Mac an Aircinn, Alan Baxter, A.K. Benedict, Clay McLeod Chapman, Kay Chronister, Ryan Cole, Craig DiLouie, Tracy Fahey, Jeffrey Ford, Philip Fracassi, Rob Francis, Christopher Golden, Rebecca Harrison, C.J. Leede, Chad Lutzke, Gary McMahon, Tanya Pell, Priya Sharma, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, Kaaron Warren, edited by Mark Morris

https://amzn.to/3VIKifa 

In 1919 an isolated Aberdeenshire community is disturbed by a strange discovery: a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved.

Two people haul the body from the ground: Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearthside and inn, people whisper: what have we unearthed?

As their stories entwine, a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community. Against the echoes of distant war, and with the boundaries blurring between right and wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame

https://amzn.to/489xuG2 

Just past the edge of summer, Alice and her daughter, Fern, arrive at the Pine Lake Apartments—a former sanatorium occupied by an ensemble of peculiar neighbors and a smattering of ghosts. Among the living: the Mermaid Lady, who performs in a nightclub fish tank; the building’s handyperson, moonlighting as a medium; and an awkwardly charming professor of medieval studies. Fern alone is acquainted with the undead, who pass like troubled clouds through the apartments, humanity mostly lost ages ago. For the determinedly private Alice, Pine Lake seems the perfect place at the edge of the world to hide herself and her daughter—until the day Fern finds a dead body in the dumpster.

https://amzn.to/4nooQYV 

Madison, reeling from a bad breakup, runs into an old acquaintance who has become suddenly and shockingly super fit. The cause? An all-female fitness boot camp led by ex-military guru Ellie Fellowes. Madison signs up to experience it herself, but something doesn’t feel right. The other students keep acting strangely; Ellie seems almost superhuman, and her intense motivational methods are becoming bizarre, even dangerous. 

Musician Johnny Blake has been struggling with a pain pill addiction after a very public, very bad fall. At the encouragement of loved ones, he retreats to a secluded cottage to detox. But Johnny isn’t alone. Something is lurking in the shadows of his new home—a creature unnatural and hungry, one that traps Johnny in a frightening bargain. 

As Madison and Johnny’s predicaments spiral into the unthinkable, they will have to look within to find the true and terrifying answer to the age-old question: How badly do you want it?

https://amzn.to/3WkoVAM 

October 30, 1979. As thunder booms and lightning streaks the skies over Pine Hill Mental Hospital, a mass breakout unleashes dozens of dangerously disturbed inmates into the darkness. While the authorities scramble to round up the escapees through the storm, three of the institution's most demented patients form an unholy alliance - Jack, a charismatic cult leader, Ollie, a debaucherous deviant, and Wallace, a mute mountain of a man with freakish strength and no conscience.

Liberated from their imprisonment, the trio of madmen celebrate their newfound freedom by leaving a trail of mutilated bodies across the countryside.

Meanwhile, Susan, a young mother, braves the storm with her eight-year-old son, attempting to get away from a different kind of monster - a tormenter in the form of a man she once loved but now turns her every waking moment into a living nightmare. A man that will not be happy to find his family has fled...and will go to any lengths to bring them home.

https://amzn.to/3KxEZN0 

When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.

But she does attend the reading of the will and discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. 

Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again.

https://amzn.to/46QqKut 

Delores “Lawrence” Franklin is a failed capitalist and a runaway headcase. Following a corporate meltdown, she moves to Mistaken Point, a small town known for two things: Mistaken Point University, where she and her best friend, Anastasia Lanes, are now enrolled, and the grisly murders of countless young women.

At her new part-time arcade job, Lawrence meets Francesca “Franky” Delores, gritty, off-putting, and chronically serious, as opposite to Lawrence as her name would suggest. Franky is convinced there is a monster on the loose, a Frankenstein creature born from hatred, responsible for the string of killings the town insists are solved.

https://amzn.to/42fOmHl 

Nineteen-year-old Sally remembers nothing about the accident that took place on Captain’s Island and destroyed her family when she was a little girl, she suffers from intense anxiety, pervasive bouts of dissociation, and gruesome nightmares.

All Sally knows is that her mother hasn’t spoken since the accident that took the life of Sally’s twin sister. Following the tragedy, her family fled and never looked back.

When her mother suddenly dies, Sally and three college friends travel to the island–for her friends it’s an adventure to a strange, abandoned place. For Sally, it’s a desperate bid to recover some of her memories and understand what really happened to her family.

https://amzn.to/3Ku7UBB 

Hotshot literary agent Henry Richmond Pendel knows how to find the next big thing and is even better at selling them. But a perfect career becomes increasingly disconcerting as he begins to feel like he’s being watched. There are rumors of a boogeyman in publishing, a rejected writer who has cracked and started killing off writers.

When Pendel’s star clients turn up brutally murdered and unsolicited queries become more and more frantic, Pendel must decide whether to act out of safety for himself and his clients or to capitalize on the attention. Is it worth a few more casualties if it means inking a few seven-figure deals?

https://amzn.to/4gP6TAl 

In the muggy, insect-ridden town of Pinecreek, Louisiana, college dropout Tess Lavigne is watching two bickering siblings while their parents are away. Her listless day drinking is interrupted when someone emerges from the woods behind the house. Filthy and feral, the daughter of religious fundamentalists, the girl known in town as Sister Gail convinces Tess to take her in for the night. The strange events of that evening will set the course for Tess’s future, and Sister Gail’s ultimate fate.

https://amzn.to/4mSLJmo 

Immortal beloveds Rebekah and Hugh are on vacation! Against a backdrop of ongoing war, this pair of chic emotional vampires from San Francisco sets off on a queer Black Sea Cruise, eager to relax, join an orgy, and feast upon their fellow passengers’ desires and sorrows. When Hugh becomes enchanted by an alluring—and possibly magical—nonbinary social media influencer named Heaven, Rebekah’s reality capsizes, and her true nature is unleashed.

https://amzn.to/489clvv 

Betrayed by the men in their lives, two women seethe with rage and bitterness. When a trickster spirit offers them the gift of revenge, they cannot resist.

Chia runs one of the best restaurants in Abuja, Nigeria, and is renowned among the male clientele for her captivating beauty and delicious hot pepper soup. But her hot pepper soup has a secret ingredient, and her beauty is not what it seems.

Claire is a 50 year-old British woman living in Abuja with her young Nigerian boyfriend and his beautiful cousin, Shadé. Consumed by jealousy and resentment, Claire’s carefully organised life spirals into chaos after a night out at Chia’s infamous restaurant.

https://amzn.to/46sC7tu 

Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.

https://amzn.to/3KvB0k4 

Margaret’s rare autoimmune condition has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated and in pain. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can―until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial.

The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital.

Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls.

https://amzn.to/4gQDy8v 

In the frigid west Texas desert, weary travelers converge at a lonely roadside motel nestled at the foot of a massive mountain. Ethan and Hunter have left behind a corpse, a fire, and a horrific act of violence. Kyla and Fernanda are fleeing for the border. Stanley and his granddaughter are returning from Mexico with a mysterious man in hot pursuit. All of them are on the run from something. All of them are hiding something.

And somehow, they’re all connected to the motel’s other guest, an enigmatic woman named Sarah Powers.

Within hours, Sarah is dead.

https://amzn.to/4gStFav 

Lieutenant Anna Koray thought she'd finally found solid ground and escaped her past as the daughter of a notorious serial killer. A loving boyfriend, a loyal dog, a life that almost feels normal—except darkness has a way of seeping in. When she saves a boy from drowning, the strange marks on his body tell a disturbing story: something in the depths tried to drag him under.

Days later, another victim surfaces with identical marks. Both victims are connected to the town's wealthiest and most influential families. And they have enemies. Others whisper that there are witches in Bayern County, seeking revenge for a long-ago murder.

https://amzn.to/3VIjOKB 

Step into stories where the ordinary twists into the peculiar, and the line between human and machine, reality and nightmare, blurs in unforeseen ways.

Echoes in the Halls, The Crawl Space, Current World, The Drum Tech, and Death by Mangrove.

The Drum Tech drops us into a music industry where one vampire, a would-be drummer, will do anything to join the band.

https://taylorzadams.com/ 

Piper just wanted her girlfriend back—she didn't mean to turn her into an undead monster. But now Maddie's back, and she's hungry. When the body count starts rising, Piper has to decide how far she’s willing to go for the girl she loves.

https://amzn.to/4pOQXlE 

Striker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea.

But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. 

https://amzn.to/48DEdrN 

The year is 1886 in New Sarum, England, and Atherton Graves only knows a life surrounded by corpses. Amidst a rash of child deaths, he alone suspects they are the product of murder. At least, that's what the ghosts in his mortuary tell him. But there's hardly time to hunt the killer; Atherton has just sold a cadaver to a spiritualist at the notorious Black Carnival, and the town gang known as the Disciples is not going to take that lightly.

https://amzn.to/470gNvw 

El Paso, Texas: Rebecca Carter awoke on a morgue table with only two desires: to find her daughter, Moonflower; and to sate her gnawing hunger. Rebecca sets out on a desperate quest, fighting her murderous craving for blood, and pursued by a vengeful FBI agent.

https://amzn.to/42Y4Jsd 

In Lock Haven, a quiet little town in Washington State, Bird Street is a special place. The residents of this pretty cul-de-sac on the edge of the woods are all successful, healthy, and happy. Their children are prodigies; well-mannered and… unnaturally smart.

But come November, the “Darker Days” descend, bringing accidents, bad luck, conflict, and illness. Luana and Ralph Lewis-da Silva prepare for this, and so do their children Kaila and Django. It is in November when a stranger appears to collect on a longstanding debt. A price must be paid for the good fortune they enjoy the rest of the year. A sacrifice must be made.

So it has been for over a century. To assuage their guilt, the residents of Bird Street choose carefully who will be sent into the woods. Usually, it is an elderly or terminally ill individual who wishes to die with dignity and is content to be helped on their way.

But this year, things don’t go to plan, and events take a terrifying turn . . .

https://amzn.to/4q5SjJ5 

Vlad the Impaler is back, and he’s raiding the Multiverse of Movies to build a monster army and conquer the world. And only one woman can stop him! Vampirella! But she’s busy in her own books… so it’s up to Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark, and bane of Vlad’s existence, to stop his evil plan! It’s monster movie madness horror from writer David Avallone (Elvira in Horrorland, Bettie Page: Unbound) and artist Kewber Bal (Vampirella, Red Rising, Red Sonja).

https://amzn.to/4gUkmGX 

On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago, there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible things happened. The children who live on this block are told by their parents to stay away from that house. But of course, children don’t listen. Children think it’s fun to be scared, to dare each other to go inside.

Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn’t return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn’t believe that. Adults never believe what kids say. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him. They thought Paul had disappeared in a way that was ordinary, explainable.

The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie’s family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.

https://amzn.to/4gXW1Ai 

The forest is hungry, and her family's secrets are tangled in the trees…

Lia Gregg always hoped to outgrow her fear of the woods surrounding her childhood home. The dark, menacing trees have long been the site of whispered legends and disappearances of girls like her. But after a breakup sends her back to live with her family, the woods feel more sinister than ever.

When a teenage girl disappears from their backyard, Lia's childhood fear becomes terrifyingly real. The missing girls are no longer just faces on the news. Now, the danger is closer than she imagined, and her younger sister could be next.

As Lia digs into the disappearances, she begins to suspect her mother knows more about the forest―and the horrors within―than she's letting on. To save her sister and uncover the truth, Lia must confront the secrets lurking in the trees and the darkness they conceal…before it's too late.

https://amzn.to/4nUOG6E 

Zora Robinson is an ambitious grad student in her dream program, Appalachian Studies, at Bricksbury University. When her thesis advisor hands her a strange diary and suggests she research the local folklore about a beast roaming the woods surrounding campus, Zora finds a community uneager to talk to an outsider.
 
As she delves into the history of the beast, she uncovers a rumored secret society called the Keepers that has tenuous ties to the beast…and Bricksbury itself. Zora soon finds herself plagued by visions of the past, and her grip on reality starts to slip as she struggles to uncover what is real and what is folklore. But when a student goes missing, Zora starts to wonder if the Keepers ever really disbanded.

https://amzn.to/4pPokEU 

Caitlyn believes her world is falling apart when her best friend cuts her off—until she gets a message from the only person who can put it back together. Family vlogger Bella Greene—the celebrity influencer she and her ex-best friend were obsessed with—offers Caitlyn a job as nanny to her twins.

https://amzn.to/46yzUg3 

Mr. Montessori and his family return home from a trip to the beach to discover that their sofa is different. Once dark and contemporary, it’s now antique, green and yellow, and smelling faintly of damp. Its appearance and origins are a mystery. A joke? An inverted theft? A break in the fabric of reality? Yes, the police take the “crime” seriously. But what happens next lies outside their expertise. Strange sounds in the night. A half-bathroom toilet with a mind of its own. Odd, fleeting glimpses of something (or someone) in mirrors. The inexplicable vision of Montessori’s neighbor: He swears he saw a burglar. . . .

https://amzn.to/475ZWaH 

Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.