This Year in Horror

https://amzn.to/4bbbJHe 

After surviving Art the Clown's Halloween massacre, Sienna and her brother are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives. As the holiday season approaches, they try to embrace the Christmas spirit and leave the horrors of the past behind. But just when they think they're safe, Art the Clown returns, determined to turn their holiday cheer into a new nightmare. The festive season quickly unravels as Art unleashes his twisted brand of terror, proving that no holiday is safe.

https://amzn.to/49kYqBF 

When nineteen-year-old Dorothy Noroît finds out she is pregnant, the road ahead seems bathed in golden light. She has a hard-working boyfriend, a beautiful home, and a job where she works with her best friend. But on October 2nd, 1994, everything changes.

Fast forward twenty-four years.

The city of Montreal is plagued by extremist group, The Winged Monkeys. The gruesome murder of a young man has just made headlines. Just when Lieutenant Henri Duhaime and his partner Detective Emilianne Saint-Gelais begin to wrap their heads around this heinous act of violence, another young man is found brutally murdered. And then another. As the body count rises, they race against the clock to track down the killer.

https://amzn.to/492EF2L 

Beginning with an introduction situating the history of horror in the context of moral panics, this carefully curated volume then is organized into three sections that introduce early attempts to explain horror's fascination; present perspectives from horror writers, filmmakers, and scholars; and offer nuanced considerations of horror's intersections with disability, queerness, race, and gender. Featuring classic commentaries on the genre by H. P. Lovecraft, Alfred Hitchcock, and Stephen King alongside incisive essays by (Noël Carroll and Robin Wood, notably) philosophers, literary and film scholars, cultural critics, and others, The Horror Theory Reader is indispensable for scholars and will be of interest to anyone curious about our paradoxical enjoyment of appalling and fearsome things.

https://amzn.to/3MZrc3e 

This had a kindlepreneur title, sadly, so I removed all the fluff from the Amazon title.

Forced to leave behind everything she knew, Mia must choose to live with one of two rival vampire families. The Bellamy and Sutton clans share a dark, complicated history that spans centuries. As Mia learns about their age-old traditions and extraordinary powers, along with their forbidden romances and betrayals, she’s drawn toward two very different loves. And as she feels her gift returning, more potent than ever before, Mia realizes she’ll need it to protect innocent lives—and save the only family she has left.

https://amzn.to/3MZWZ41 

This books has a kindlepreneur title on Amazon, so I removed the fluff as it is not listed as a subtitle on the cover.

Josie is at rock bottom. Burned out, heartbroken and recovering from an abusive relationship, she lives a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean.

But the tall, dense pine trees are not the only things casting shadows across her skin.

Josie's hopes of a fresh start are horribly derailed when she stumbles across a dead woman's decaying, ant-infested body in the woods. The grim discovery sends her into a downward spiral, forcing her to face uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past - all whilst battling the swarming black ants that seem to have burrowed into her mind; and her flesh.

https://amzn.to/4qycw9B 

In 1984, exiled author Salvatore Archimboldi accepts the help of a psychotherapist to write his new book. He hopes to transform his traumatic memories into literary genius. But the resulting book, The Truth of Carcosa, is pure evil. Horrified, Archimboldi suppresses the book and wills all traces of it, his correspondence, and any copies to be destroyed.

Long after Archimboldi's death, in a chaotic age of resurgent nationalism and violence, one of the only havens for his work is the ALI, the Archive for Literary Investment, where a biographer and his protégée search through Archimboldi’s correspondence for clues on the evil manuscript as they attempt to stop unscrupulous firms with their own plans for the manuscript.

https://sumerianrecords.com/products/kittie-fire-graphic-novel?srsltid=AfmBOoogZ8_JMPF6OXTtSOqiol8wsH1Sh6hvoUy9iQ7LGe6-E_Mu1FCm 

On a desolate stretch of backwoods highway, metal legends Kittie are just trying to make it to their next gig, until a deer in the road sends their van skidding into the heart of an ancient forest. With no cell service, no spare tire, and night closing in, their only option is to walk… straight into something waiting for them.

Deep in the trees, a secret coven prepares a ritual under the full moon. Their sisterhood is bound by blood, sacrifice, and fire, and tonight, they’re one member short. When the band stumbles upon their dying flames, the witches see more than four stranded musicians. They see destiny. They see replacements. They see fuel.

As vultures circle overhead and the shadows twist unnaturally around them, Morgan, Mercedes, Tara, and Ivy realize they haven’t wandered into a horror movie cliché, they’ve walked into the script.

From Wiki - Fire is the seventh studio album by Canadian heavy metal band Kittie, released on June 21, 2024, by Sumerian Records. It is the band's first album in almost 13 years following the release of I've Failed You (2011), in between which time they were largely on an indefinite hiatus due to rising costs associated with touring and making music, a lack of public interest, and the death of bassist Trish Doan in 2017. After receiving several offers to play shows in late 2021, Kittie ended their hiatus in January 2022, with bassist Ivy Vujic returning to their lineup after a decade-long absence. Following their performances at the When We Were Young festival in October 2022, the band were signed to Sumerian and began working on new material.

https://amzn.to/494L39O 

Springing forth from the heyday of Weird Tales magazine and its contemporaries comes a new anthology of fifteen uncanny tales—classics and rarities penned by the women writers whose weird imaginings defined the pulp era.

Featuring an introduction and biographical notes by veteran editor Mike Ashley, this collection offers ghostly thrills, shapeshifting horrors and monstrous coming-of-age narratives from Weird Tales stalwarts such as Mary Elizabeth Counselman alongside more surprising authors such as Lucy M. Montgomery.

This new selection also includes a 1990s classic by Tanith Lee, the queen of Weird Tales magazine’s revival era, and a recently rediscovered gem of mythical horror by Evangeline Walton.

https://amzn.to/3Lipidh 

In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it has been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life for ever.

A young American woman, Apryl, arrives at Barrington House. She's been left an apartment by her mysterious Great Aunt Lillian, who died in strange circumstances. Rumours claim Lillian was mad. But her diary suggests she was implicated in a horrific and inexplicable event decades ago.

Determined to learn something of this eccentric woman, Apryl begins to unravel the hidden story of Barrington House. She discovers that a transforming, evil force still inhabits the building. And the doorway to Apartment 16 is a gateway to something altogether more terrifying...

https://amzn.to/3Lnpmsp 

In the isolated town of Cairney, the Angel of Death, under specific circumstances, allows the dead to return to life ― but not always as desired. For Friede Inkerman, pianist to Cairney’s sacred funerals, Death’s gift is a curse, not a blessing. All she wants after being murdered by her wife and resurrected against her will is to finally rest in peace, free from the grief and suspicion that ostracize her from the rest of her death-worshipping town. On Allhallowsmas, Friede’s hope of passing on to eternal rest is dashed when Death’s sacred relic is stolen and the acolyte who guards it is brutally slain, putting all the dead souls in Cairney at risk of fading into oblivion at sunset. Friede also can't ignore how much the murder resembles her own ― an echo too haunting to dismiss.

https://amzn.to/4prpVPT 

Jasmine Bay is a nurse for an Oakland mental health facility, battling her own demons, caught in a spiral of suicidal despair. Estranged from her brother James and his wife Tilly, who was once her best friend, Jas has chosen self-isolation to protect herself—even if it means denying herself a hopeful future with co-worker and potential love interest Henry Lewis.

When her godmother dies, Jas returns to Redceder for the funeral, a logging town where her grandfather William Whipple made a living deforesting the countryside, ripping and raping apart nature’s very foundations for corporate profits. As trees fell to axes and chainsaws, so did dozens of lumberjacks, falling prey to the dangers of their job—and to the ecoterrorism of Jas’s grandfather who was lynched for his crimes.

https://amzn.to/3YVbQPK 

When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

https://amzn.to/4jr58KX 

A feral shut-in discovers a disturbing internet porn video of what seems to be herself. A seance of coked-up artists summons unearthly forces in a studio apartment. The staircase of an exurban marketing company descends endlessly beneath the earth.

The impossibility of goodness crowds in upon two young trans women barely surviving on sex work and zero-hours contracts. Below the familiar evils of capitalism and the bottomless depths of internet culture, a darker horror awaits. What curse follows these women? What are they escaping? What are they running towards?

https://amzn.to/49lbtTA 

When John Stephenson peers out of his window on a Tuesday morning, he sees nothing but clear, gray skies hovering above the houses on his staid suburban street, but the next 48 hours will prove to be a waking nightmare from which John and his neighbors cannot escape. As the first flakes fall, the whispering begins. A woman walking her dog leans into the sidewalk as though something buried beneath speaks to her. As the storm grows in ferocity, each of the residents hear the storm calling.

What it says, however, few may survive to repeat.