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.

https://amzn.to/43DiFt7

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

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

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

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

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

https://amzn.to/4lepXda

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

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

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

https://amzn.to/4iKz3fP

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

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

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

https://amzn.to/4iOIWtk

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

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