It’s hot as hell, so why not read some horror fiction? Especially since one of the books below involves a literal journey into hell, where it is surprisingly temperate. Demonic possessions and exorcism also abound, along with multiple sexy versions of the antichrist. (That which we fear, we also want to sleep with, amiright?)
Horror fiction also proves an apt form to analyze politics, especially the politics of the body, and control thereof, with several works on this list pushing back on transphobia and misogyny through the growing genre of body horror.
Finally, 2025 has been bringing us a whole lot of weird, in fiction and in life, with plenty of horror featuring wacky premises taken to extremely bloody conclusions (looking at you, Chuck Tingle and Jennifer Kiefer).
Thanks, as always, for letting me recommend weird-ass books to you all. As the flies and worms in Andrew Joseph White’s new novel might put it, I loooooooveeeee yoooouuuu.
Danie Shokoohi, Glass Girls
(Zando – Gillian Flynn Books, June 24)
While I’ve read plenty of novels featuring spiritual mediums, this one hit me right in the ectoplasm. Danie Shokoohi’s haunting meditation on grief, motherhood, and fragility takes us into the terrifying childhood of two sisters tasked with using their inherited magic to keep their brother alive. The only problem? Every boy born to a woman in the Glass family dies before the age of 20. Despite their traumatic upbringing, the sisters must reunite as adults and tap back into their mystical powers: this time not to save anyone from death, but to help an angered ghost pass on. A visceral, blood-soaked paean to the horrors and limits of love.
Miranda Smith, Smile for the Cameras
(Ballantine, June 24)
I can’t get enough of thrillers centered on horror films (neither can our readers!), and with the final installment of the Final Destination series quickly approaching, I’m ready for a scary novel about the long-delayed reboot of a venerable franchise, filmed in the same gothic locale as the original movies, despite rumors of hauntings. Of course, things go awry immediately, and the disastrous events on-set seem to mimic the original film’s gory plot. Can Smith’s heroine prove she can survive as a final girl IRL? I can’t wait to find out! Also, for more horror-film-themed fiction, look out for The October Film Haunt, coming out later this year.
Craig DiLouie, My Ex, The Antichrist
(Run for It, July 1)
This book is one of several this year to feature things getting hot and heavy with the lords of the underworld. Craig DiLouie’s new novel is a particularly fun take on the rise of religious horror. Metal band The Shivers, self-described as a “demon disco” ensemble, find out their lead guitarist is the antichrist after a series of violent riots break out at their live shows. When the guitarist leaves to form another band, the Shivers must pivot to the only musical style capable of preventing the apocalypse: pop punk. Honestly, makes sense!
Melanie Arnold, How to Survive a Horror Story
(Poisoned Pen Press, July 8)
A disparate group of authors gather at a famous horror writer’s house for the reading of his will, only to discover the house wants to consume them. Forget smart houses—I want a murder house.
Cherie Priest, It Was Her House First
(Poisoned Pen Press, July 22)
Gotta love a ghost with opinions, especially when too many strangers have already tried to renovate her home, and NOT to her specifications. Cherie Priest’s delightful haunted house novel takes us into a fixer upper filled with fractious ghosts, none of whom are particularly pleased with the new owner’s renovations. I’m hoping everyone starts to work together and the house ends up as a preservationist’s dream.
Cassandra Khaw, The Library at Hellebore
(Tor Nightfire, July 22)
Dark academia comes to its most logical, brutal conclusion in Cassandra Khaw’s splatterpunk take on college in the underworld. Are the professors there to teach, or do they have more disturbing plans for their students? Find out in the bloodiest graduation ceremony since the third season of Buffy. This is, hilariously enough, one of three books on this list to feature a hot antichrist, although sadly, the one in this one’s an asshole.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching
(Del Rey, July 15)
In Moreno-Garcia’s chilling new novel, a graduate student researching a horror novelist delves into a life-altering mystery and the strange forces surrounding a certain manuscript that ties it all together. Witchcraft and the power of narrative intersect to yield this evocative, powerful tale. –DM
Markus Redmond, Blood Slaves
(Dafina, July 29)
Another alternative history! Markus Redmond has crafted a truly epic reimagining of the 19th century, in which an ancient vampire enslaved on a plantation becomes the catalyst for a widespread slave rebellion and violent reckoning with injustice. It’s clear throughout the narrative that the true monsters are not the vampires, who need blood to survive, but the slave-owners, who require human suffering in the name of profit. Redmond’s novel should be one of the most satisfying of the year, and perhaps of the decade.
Lindsay King-Miller, This Is My Body
(Quirk, August 5)
It’s a banner year for religious-inspired horror, running the gamut from campy and satirical to truly terrifying, and I’m particularly excited for all the queer entries into this rarified category. In This Is My Body, a queer woman flees her evangelical family after a horrifying childhood, only to return to the fold for an exorcism when her teenage daughter starts showing signs of demonic possession. Feminist horror, body horror, religious horror —this one has it all.
Rachel Eve Moulton, Tantrum
(Putnam, August 5)
Tantrum takes a parent’s worries to their logical extreme, in this darkly funny take on a mother’s fear of her own harmful legacy. Moulton’s narrator is terrified when her baby begins exhibiting monstrous traits, endangering the rest of the family, and memories start to return of her own traumatic past. Tantrum serves as a fascinating metaphor for the feral nature of girlhood and how society conspires to restrict women, physically and mentally.
Chuck Tingle, Lucky Day
(Tor Nightfire, August 12)
Chuck Tingle’s third novel takes us into the bloody aftermath of a mysterious mass mortality event in which probability went haywire. Why did so many die from extremely unlikely chains of events? An expert in the field of statistics teams up with cheerfully psychotic government agent to investigate a casino boasting profits that don’t match with the odds, just in time for a new wave of bizarre deaths. Lucky combines the clever violence of Final Destination with the slapstick horror of Tucker and Dale Versus Evil for a wholly original work. Honestly, when I die, I hope it’s at the hands of an enraged chimpanzee dressed in Shakespearean garb and wielding a typewriter.
Hailey Piper, A Game in Yellow
(Saga, August 12)
The King In Yellow is the seed of inspiration for Hailey Piper’s batshit erotic horror thriller, in which a lesbian couple looking to spice things up goes down a hellish rabbit-hole when they discover a disturbing masterpiece that gives dark pleasures in small doses, and delivers death to those who ask for a bigger slice.
Ania Ahlborn, The Unseen
(Gallery, August 19)
This book is scary af. A family in Colorado takes in a feral child, only to immediately experience a variety of strange and violent happenings. Is their new family member at fault? Or is there something worse hiding in the woods around them? Ahlborn’s take on the classic changeling narrative should have readers talking for years to come.
Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz
(Berkley, August 19)
In mid-18th century New Spain, a plague in Zacatecas sends a young woman and her family to her fiancés remote silver mine, where an ancient evil awaits. Isabel Canas has quickly become a superstar of historical fiction, and this one looks like the best yet!
RF Kuang, Katabasis
(Harper Voyager, August 26)
RF Kuang returns to her speculative vision of academia in decline, as two students descend into the underworld to track down the soul of their newly deceased advisor. What follows is a fascinating hybrid of every major tradition of hell, and a tongue-in-check journey through a distinctly academic version of punishment for sins.
Andrew Joseph White, You Weren’t Meant to Be Human
(Saga, September 9)
In a year of gore-filled nightmares, Andrew Joseph White’s tale of flies and worms might outdo them all them with its poetic grotesquerie. You Weren’t Mean to Be Human follows a young autistic trans man who believes he’s found a safe home when he’s welcomed by sentient bugs and their followers into their rotting nest. There, he can be himself, as long as he also feeds his new overlords plenty of rotting flesh. But when he finds himself pregnant, the flies and worms won’t let him terminate the pregnancy: they have plans for the child.
Marie Still, Bad Things Happened in this Room
(Rising Action, September 16)
Marie Still’s haunting exploration of parental grief is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re ready for the emotional rollercoaster, it’s well worth the read. In Bad Things Happened in this Room, a woman begins to question her restricted life when her routine is disrupted and her husband’s behavior becomes increasingly strange. Is she confined to her home by her husband, or by her own agoraphobia? And what is hiding in that one corner room, the one she’s told not to enter, the one in which something terrible occurred, something she can’t remember…
Alma Katsu, Fiend
(Putnam, September 16)
Succession, but with demons! Which.is honest yes good an explanation for a wealthy family’s rise as any other. Alma Katsu’s take on squabbling siblings competing for the throne is short, sharp, and all-together shocking in its conclusion.
Sam Rebelein, Galloway’s Gospel
(William Morrow, September 23)
This book is so bat shit. Or shall I say, pig shit and bat puke? You’ll get that reference when you read it. Sam Rebelein has been quietly crafting his own horrifying mythology, a cursed valley known as Renfield in which evil, like pollution, gets worse the further you go down stream. But Renfield County—and in particular, the town of Burnskidde—is facing far worse than the runoff from the paper factory in Rebelein’s epic tale of doodles and nightmares.
Galloway’s Gospel begins with the bored Rachel Galloway drawing in the margins of her history notebook. When her classmates, and the townspeople, begin to embrace her absurd illustrations as gospel for a new religion, things start to get truly wild. Be warned: there are more missing limbs in this than in Snowpiercer and Geek Love combined.
A. Rushby, Slashed Beauties
(Berkley, September 23)
Back in the 18th century, they used to think the only & way to get medical students to study was to provide them with infamously beautiful anatomical models to dissect (and, presumably, admire). In this haunting gothic tale, these “Venuses” have the power to create obsessions so all-consuming they result in death; an art collector goes up against their crazed defenders when she intends to destroy them, once and for all.
Kit Burgoyne, The Captive
(Hell’s Hundred, September 30)
Rosemary’s Baby, but make it Patty Hearst! In The Captive, a group of ecoterrorists kidnaps the heiress to a family fortune built on the violent exploitation of labor and the land, only to find out that their victim is pregnant with the devil’s baby, and has no intention of returning to her family. Come for the set-up, stay for the garden party. You’ll know it when you see it.
Philip Fracassi, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre
(Tor Nightfire, September 30)
While 2025 is positively peppered with crime-solving elders, this one takes the trend into horror territory. Retirement home resident Rose is contemplating moving in with her daughter and waffling on a romance with a kind neighbor when a series of brutal killings rocks her quiet community. They’re used to death, but they’re certainly not used to this kind of death, and the residents of Autumn Springs will not go gently into that good night if it’s a slasher sending them there.
Grace Byron, Herculine
(Saga Press, October 7)
A commune for trans women is the setting for Grace Byron’s upcoming horror thriller, and as someone who has lived in several intentional communities and been a bad roommate in all of them, I can confirm they are indeed perfect places for setting disturbing tales featuring wacky characters. Merculine’s narrator just wants a break from transphobic America when she heads to the forest to join her ex-girlfriend’s intentional community but what she finds there may be even worse than the real world, and the residents may be in even more danger.
Jennifer Kiefer, Crafting for Sinners
(Quirk Books, October 7)
Jennifer Kiefer’s sophomore effort has an awesome premise: a queer woman trapped in a church-owned crafting store must fight off the crazed homophobic employees using only her wits and the materials at hand. Get ready for some truly creative uses of glue guns and knitting needles. Also, you’ll never think of sprinkles the same way again…
M. Jane Worma, Of Beasts
(Clash, February 2026)
A beautiful, haunting meditation on love, fate, and the right to choose (if only the method of one’s own destruction). In of beasts, a small town preacher is desperately in tore wimone of his constituents, who just happens to be the antichrist. Neither of them wants to see the world destroyed, but can they escape their tremble destiny? Also I know, this one isn’t out till next year, but I couldn’t resist including yet another depiction of a conflicted antichrist.
Leila Siddiqui, The Glowing Hours
(Hell’s Hundred, February 2026)
There’s been quite a few takes on that rainy summer when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in a Swiss villa, but The Glowing Hours takes this historical moment into supernatural territory for my favorite take yet. Siddiqui’s narrator is a disgruntled Indian aristocrat, fallen on hard times and abandoned by her family, who finds employment as maid to the Shelley family just in time to accompany them on their writing jaunt to Switzerland to join Lord Byron. Misery envelopes the travelers immediately, with bad weather, substandard accommodations, supernatural visitors, and the most horrifying of all: Lord Byron being a complete asshole.
