New Horror Books

Explore a chilling assortment of the latest horror literature, crafted by today’s most talented authors. Immerse yourself in spine-tingling tales of hidden fears and otherworldly horrors. Don’t miss this curated compendium; discover your next gripping read and delve into the depths of terror.

Here are all the new horror books I could find coming out this month. Typical Books often covers new releases from the HWA, and as part of the Typical Books Bookworm Central, here are even more!

Or, see the full year in horror books.

January 3, 2025
  • Where the Daybreak Ends: Stories from Buzzard's Edge by Brennan LaFaro, illustrated by Val Halvorson

    January 3, 2025

    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.

     

January 7, 2025
  • Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay Chapman

    January 7, 2025

    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.

     

  • Wicked Jenny by Matt Hilton

    January 7, 2025

    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.

     

January 14, 2025
  • At Midnight We Possess The Damned by Andre Duza and Nick Cato

    January 14, 2025

    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…

     

  • Dark Worlds We Wander by Kristin Kirby

    January 14, 2025

    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.

     

  • Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

    January 14, 2025

    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.

     

January 28, 2025
  • At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric Larocca

    January 28, 2025

    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.

     

  • Old Soul by Susan Barker

    January 28, 2025

    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.

     

  • Our Winter Monster by Dennis Mahoney

    January 28, 2025

    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 . . .

     

January 31, 2025
  • Strange Stones by Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni

    January 31, 2025

    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.

     

February 4, 2025
  • Carmilla, Pushkin Press Deluxe Edition by Sheridan Le Fanu

    February 4, 2025

    Beautiful cover of black with a red relief evoking minimalist film poster art. Blackletter style font.

    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 which influenced Dracula and all the vampire stories that followed, including Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

    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.

     

  • Exploring Dark Short Fiction #7: A Primer to Gemma Files edited by Eric J Guignard

    February 4, 2025

    https://amzn.to/4j4U4m6

    Named "One of the genre's most original and innovative voices" (L.A. Review of Books) and "An expert at terrifying prose" (LitReactor), Canadian author Gemma Files has been penning gritty and macabre fiction since 1993, earning industry awards and critical acclaim from sources such as National Public Radio, Publishers Weekly, and The National Post. Files imbues her cross-genre work with layers like dark stratum: heartbreak upon horror, built over the vignettes of life we may find ourselves in, but for one slight turn of reality.

    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-or learn more of-the evocative voice of Gemma Files, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich.

     

  • Listen to Your Sister: A Novel by Neena Viel

    February 4, 2025

    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 Williams 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.

     

  • Victorian Psycho: A Novel by Virginia Feito

    February 4, 2025

    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

    Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty 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 entitled Pounds 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. . . .

     

February 11, 2025
  • The House at Black Tooth Pond by Stephen Mark Rainey

    February 11, 2025

    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

    AIKEN MILL, VIRGINIA… A legend-haunted town in Sylvan County, located in a remote, mountainous corner of the state. With its long history of countless deaths and disappearances, Aiken Mill has become known to law enforcement as “The Cold Case Capital of the World.”

    Now, an unidentified, mutilated body has turned up in the town. During his investigation, Sheriff Bryce Parrott discovers frightening clues that lead him to believe some ghostly force—or entity—may be responsible for the killing.

    While exploring the darkest corners of Sylvan County, 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 Sheriff Parrott and the 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.

     

  • The Poorly Made and Other Things by Sam Rebelein

    February 11, 2025

    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.

     

February 14, 2025
  • Blood on Satan's Claw: or, The Devil's Skin by Robert Wynne-Simmons, illustrated by Richard Wells

    February 14, 2025

    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.

     

  • Hot Singles in Your Area by Jordan Shiveley

    February 14, 2025

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

    https://amzn.to/4fRGEa6

    Noah desperately needs a new job that involves less blood and piss than his current one. So, when he spots an ad for a newspaper 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.

     

February 18, 2025
  • Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

    February 18, 2025

    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 magnate 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, who is 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 by a 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 Vengeful Dead by Darcy Coates

    February 18, 2025

    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.

     

February 21, 2025
  • The Pink Agave Motel: & Other Stories by V. Castro

    February 21, 2025

    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

    Readers are invited to The Pink Agave Motel,where brutality and intimacy ooze across the pages, exploring the depths of the unhinged imagination and how human desire unlocks the impulse to bite. Castro’s voice, influenced by Mexican folklore and a feminist perspective, illuminates a deeper view of how unrequited love affects every type of being alike.

    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.

     

March 4, 2025
  • The Unworthy: A Novel by Agustina Bazterrica

    March 4, 2025

    https://amzn.to/3Panh1d
    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?

     

March 18, 2025
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

    March 18, 2025

    https://amzn.to/41L2M2z

    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.

     

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