Horror aims to scare, haunt, or repulse. Fans of horror savor the genre's ability to follow temptation and take pleasure in terror. These picks are sure to send a shiver down your spine.
A nameless narrator bluntly presents the record of a family being terrorized by home invaders for 48 hours. This narrator, an expert home invader, speaks directly to the reader—or is it to the novice invader whom the narrator is directing through his first "performance"?
A young Cree woman is tormented by vivid dreams from before her sister's untimely death and wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands before returning to her rural hometown in Alberta seeking answers. There, she is led on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community, and the land they call home.
Charles Thomas Tester is not a very good musician, but he can fake it well enough to make a rough living hustling on the streets of Prohibition-era New York. He takes a job at the home of Robert Suydam, a wealthy man from Red Hook, only to find Sudyam's occult ambitions involve opening a portal to other dimensions and summoning the Sleeping King to Earth.
This creepy and suspenseful novel follows the Graves family. Haunted by their tragic pasts, they move back to their hometown with their son. There, he becomes involved with a strange boy who has a taste for dark magic that puts them at the heart of a battle of good vs. evil.
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell. The executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale. Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he's just put a target on his back. And what's worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles. Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good.
Ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.
From the rubble-strewn streets of United States-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local cafe—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them a proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed.
What's the worst thing you've ever done? In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories, some true, some fiction, but all of them frightening. Although this may be a simple action to distract themselves from their quiet lives, one story is coming back with a vengeance to haunt them and their small town.
Working to rebuild her law practice after her son commits suicide, Angela Toussaint journeys to the family home where the suicide took place, hoping for answers, and discovers an evil force that is driving locals to acts of violence. Due brings voodoo to the fictional town of Sacajawea, Washington, in a cleverly plotted tale of possession and magic gone awry.
After moving to a new apartment complex next to a cemetery, a young Japanese family experiences strange and terrifying occurrences that send the other residents fleeing their homes, ultimately leaving them alone with a dark, evil something—or someone—residing in the basement. One of the most popular writers working in Japan today, Mariko Koike is a recognized master of detective fiction and horror writing.
In their new town, a small East Coast beach community, Todd works as a high school English teacher and leads a quiet life with his son, Anthony. One day, Todd is approached by his high school bully, Jack, seemingly serendipitously. How did Jack find him, and what's he doing here? What follows is a tale of deception, manipulation, and murder.
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of what at first seems to be acute schizophrenia. Her condition only gets worse, leading the Barretts to believe it's actually demonic possession, as they become the center of a reality TV show.
A single mother takes a job cleaning house for a reclusive horror film director. She keeps her head down until she starts hearing noises from behind a locked door, and soon finds this forbidding house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.
A good kid in a small Texas town in 1989 finds himself cursed to kill for revenge in true slasher film style. Gruesome and darkly humorous, the story is told from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography.
A boarded-up house on a dead-end street houses a family of three: a teenage girl who isn't allowed outside, a man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory, and a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what's buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all.
Best friends Amy and Stacy (and their boyfriends Jeff and Eric) travel to Cancun, Mexico, for a summer they'll never forget. On arrival, the Americans meet German tourist Mathias, whose brother Heinrich is missing. Last seen heading into the jungle with a beautiful woman to join an archaeological expedition to some Mayan ruins, Heinrich hasn't been heard from since...although he did leave behind a crudely drawn map.
On the run, a mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. When they stumble upon a village of ageless children thirsty for blood, they must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature to survive. This is a novella for fans of sinister, thought-provoking, horrific retellings of Western classics.
While residing in her late husband’s crumbling estate to see out her pregnancy, newly widowed Elsie is met with resentment and hostility from both the servants and local villagers and soon discovers that she's not alone when she finds a wooden figure that bears a startling resemblance to her—and whose eyes seem to follow her where she goes.
A supernatural thriller set in South Carolina in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a real monster.
Enriquez offers a masterful collection full of grotesque body horror, red-hot terror, and mysterious events, revealing the pain and loss endured by Argentinian women. Set mostly around Buenos Aires, the stories invoke images from the torture and degradation of Argentina’s past military dictatorship.
Tense and atmospheric, this novel tells the story of four climbers who hike into the Kentucky wilderness to climb a newly discovered cliff face. But things start going wrong as soon as their expedition begins, suggesting something sinister may be present in the valley with them.