All the Horror Fiction We've Recommended This Fall (So Far)

When I put together our big fall preview list a couple of months ago, some readers thought there might be a bit too much horror included in amongst the mysteries, thrillers, and noir. To figure out if there was, indeed, too much horror, I decided to pull together all the blurbs I and my fellow editors had written about horror fiction coming out in September and beyond.

It was a lot.

But I don’t think, in October, there can be such a thing as “too much horror”, especially if you put together a horror list and actually call it a list of horror novels. Here it is, then: our list of new and upcoming horror novels that we recommend, without any crime novels included. Except for the ones that also happen to be crime novels. I’ve also tried to include category descriptions so that fans of particular subgenres may skim for their preferred forms. Folk horror and body horror dominate the season’s offerings, along with gothics, historical terrors, supernatural thrillers, and a pleasing amount of metafiction. Also, some gore!

All blurbs are by me, unless otherwise stated.

Leopoldo Goût, Rooted
(Tor Nightfire)
FOLK HORROR/SUPERNATURAL

Gout’s first novel, Pinata, wowed me with its intricate plotting and horrifying visuals; Rooted promises to continue what Pinata started, excavating legends and inhabiting horrors based in Mesoamerican traditions. In Rooted, a museum worker accompanies a collection of repatriated objects to their new home in Mexico City, where an ancient power trapped in a looted artifact reawakens and takes possession of its careful guardian.

Sarah Langan, Trad Wife
(Atria)
TECHNO-HORROR/BODY HORROR

Forget social media thrillers—it is now the age of influencer horror. Sarah Langan has already won me as a reader through her speculative suburban suspense; now she takes it a step further with a take on trad wives even more disturbing than the megahit Yesteryear. Determined to write a daring expose, an investigative reporter embeds herself with the family of a trad-wife influencer. The kitchen is messy, the kids are uneducated, the parents are exhausted, and the old-fashioned lifestyle from their videos is nowhere to be seen. But the family’s sins don’t end at hypocrisy—their matriarch is fully possessed by a demonic spirit (honestly, that tracks) and he’s looking for a new home.

Robert G. Penner, Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell
(McNally Jackson Books)
LITERAL HELLSCAPE

I love a good satire taken to its fullest, most logical absurdities, and Robert G. Penner does this in spades with Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell. In this alternative history of the British Empire, colonialism has reached the outer circles of hell, where wraiths are put to work on enormous plantations, demons are relegated to the periphery to plot their revenge, and England’s least finest bachelors and most exploited workhouse girls try to make the most of their new lives down under (aka, the underworld). There’s a rebellion brewing amongst the host of Hell, and the profit-seeking colonizers have no idea what’s coming.

Alma Katsu, Incarnate
(Putnam)
TECHNO-HORROR/BODY HORROR

The second on this list to take gruesome delight in the horrors of influencer culture, Incarnate centers around a put-upon tech worker with low self-esteem and a penchant for AI deepfakes; the two collide when she creates a gorgeous avatar and makes a deal with a dark internet presence to achieve fame and power via her alter-ego. When the protagonist’s IRL appearance starts shifting to resemble the impossible proportions of her creation, and her videos result in universal adulation and instant success, she begins to question her devil’s bargain, and wonder what price will be demanded for all her new rewards. Another excellent effort from a consistently entertaining writer, this one should please audiences of thrillers and horror alike.

Megan Mostyn-Brown, The Need
(Del Rey)
CANNIBALS

There are a lot of books about cannibalism out this year, and a lot of titles getting compared to Succession, but this is one of the weirdest in either category. Megan Mostyn-Brown’s debut follows a mother and her teenage children as they find themselves in the clutches of her dead husband’s family, desperate for an heir who shares their predilection for human flesh. The ancient dynasty of monstrous aristocrats are not going to let their scion’s widow or her children get away easily, but as they often say, even in books about extremely wealthy cannibals, never underestimate the power of love. I can’t wait to see what Mostyn-Brown does next!

Alex Gonzalez, The Man of Wind and Moss
(Erewhon)
FOLK HORROR

Alex Gonzalez’s debut Rekt eviscerated internet culture, broke my mind, and was one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read. Now, Gonzalez turns from technothriller to folk horror, following a group of friends on a camping trip as they confront their failures, their mistakes, their love triangles, and soon enough, their favorite cryptid. Gory, snarky, brutal, and meta AF.

Deena Helm, Our Cut of Salt
(Tor Nightfire)
HAUNTED HOUSE/GOTHIC

The youngest daughter of a Palestinian family decides to finally see their ancestral home in Haifa, in mourning for lost memories after the death of an elder. Her grandmother mourned her lost city more than she ever loved her daughter, named Haifa and destined to only ever disappoint. Now, Marina is determined to uncover her family’s secrets and restore their connection to their old abode, but the house has sickened under the weight of occupation, devouring its new denizens, scaring away neighborhood cats, and generally freaking everyone out, including the ghost of Marina’s grandmother. Something haunted is waiting for Marina, something corrupted, something that will put her in great danger—unless her mother, and the ghost of her grandmother, can figure out a way to rescue both their family and their home.

Kim Bohyun, Mothersucker
Translated by Archana Madhavan
(Vintage)
VAMPIRES

In Mothersucker, a woman returns from the dead, seeking vengeance against those complicit in her daughter’s death. Meanwhile, a serial killer seems to be targeting those who’ve mistreated women, children, and animals; no evidence is found on the bodies save for two puncture marks on each neck (you see where this is going…) Kim Bohyun’s background in poetry shows throughout the novel, evolving directly into poetic form at the tale’s end. Don’t let the cutesy name fool you – this is a spare and moving story that lingers long after the last page.

Tananarive Due, Mazywood
(Saga)
HAUNTED HISTORY/FRIENDLY MONSTERS

Tananarive Due has been steadily growing in reputation with each new work in her storied career, quietly amassing one of the greatest oeuvres in horror history; her last novel, The Reformatory, finally took Due from best-kept secret to household name, and her upcoming release delivers just as much heartbreak, horror, and history. Mazywood follows the long shadow of exploitation and trauma from the 1920s through to the present day: in Old Hollywood, the child of Black vaudevillians makes a fervent wish for a loyal helpmeet and a successful career, only to find herself facing rampant discrimination and impossible compromises; three generations later, her grandson takes his wife and children to his grandmother’s dilapidated resort, full of decayed glamour, dark secrets, a terrifying creature, and perhaps, just a kernel of hope. Mazywood may be 500 pages long, but I blazed through it in a single afternoon, and I have no doubt future readers will find it just as compelling. Man, this book was good…

Emily Zinnikas, I Am the Monster Under the Bed
(St Martins)
FRIENDLY MONSTERS

An artist returns to her hometown after being outed for her connection to an infamous true crime case; her only friend in childhood was the monster that lived under the bed, who taught her to read and was in general a great friend, but obviously must have something to do with these murders.

Saratoga Schaefer, A Thousand Monstrous Forms
(Crooked Lane Books)
GOTHIC

An artist and a notorious art dealer are at the center of Schaefer’s latest thriller, a retelling of the Bluebeard legend. Schaefer has been a writer on the rise in recent years, with a string of strong thrillers behind them. This one has all the gothic notes and chilling dread readers could hope for. –DM

Micaiah Johnson, The Unhaunting
(Putnam)
HAUNTED HOUSE

The Unhaunting is one of the best haunted house novels I’ve read this decade, and given how the literary world has responded to the housing crisis and the pandemic need for wide open spaces, that’s saying something. In speculative fiction author Micaiah Johnson’s first foray into horror, two best friends get a chance to renovate a house built just after the Civil War, a place where nothing bad ever happens. No one has ever died there, no one has ever been ill there, no child has ever died there, and no trees have ever fallen there. While the house’s inheritor, a white man, seems to take their blessings for granted, his best friend, a Black woman, quickly develops a healthy suspicion of the estate’s good fortune, putting her on a collision course with her new residence and its powerful magic. The ending was shattering, but well-earned and necessary.

Doretta Lau, We Are Underlings
(Spiderline)
LITERAL HELLSCAPE/COMEDIC HORROR

There’s a theme park for everything these days, so why not build a lavish amusement park dedicated to the final frontier: death itself? That’s the logic behind Nine Circles, in which visitors can explore attractions and rides dedicated to death, dying, and the afterlife; they’re almost ready to open, but a series of unfortunate occurances, recalcitrant bureaucrats, and lackadaisical experts threaten to derail the entire enterprise. And that’s before one of the project’s most essential execs gets ressurected in order to dupe the investors, a con that’s difficult to pull off with a literal zombie. If you’re in the mood for more hellscape workplace satires, check out the amazingly titled I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell.

Jason Rekulak, Look What the Cat Dragged In
(Flatiron)
DEMONIC POSSESSION

Cat lovers beware: there are cats in peril in this book! But if you do what I did, and skip to the back, you can return safely to the beginning (or around chapter 4, where I got anxious), and continue reading. Rekulak is one of the most playfully visual writers around, and the many illustrations included in this book, contributed by two different artists, blend seamlessly with the narrative. In Look What the Cat Dragged In, comics artist Penny is still searching for her recently missing muse, Popcorn, when her boyfriend introduces a new cat into their home, one he promised to pet-sit for his boss. Penny’s new feline friend seems obsessed with her, following her everywhere and watching her every move; he also seems possessed by something horrific, violent, and full of reallllly nasty poops. What’s up with her slinky, stinky visitor? And where the hell is Popcorn?!? All these questions, and more, will be answered by the end of the book, but be warned: most readers will have to take several breaks to squeeze whatever small animals are in the immediate vicinity.

Benedict Anning, Atomic Coffin
(Saga)
COSMIC HORROR

If you ever wanted to read a mashup of Smilla’s Sense of Snow and The Thing, with a little Cold War espionage thrown into the mix, then wait no further: the book of your worst nightmares and the reason you will never again contemplate scuba diving has arrived, and it is terrifying. Atomic Coffin follows an agent code-named Thistle who’s getting extracted from her deep cover in East Berlin after coming across some top-secret documents with bizarre implications. After being smuggled into international waters in the North Sea, she’s unceremoniously dumped on a submarine crew to investigate the mystery at the center of the documents: deep under the surface of the ocean, just outside of Iceland, a Soviet submarine has been sitting for years. It seems abandoned, evacuated in a hurry, with only hints at the malevolent forces that sent them packing, and that will soon prove just as nightmarish to the newcomers.

Maximiliano Barrientos, Thousands of Eyes
Translated by Thomas Bunstead
(Counterpoint)
COSMIC HORROR

This book reads kinda like Mad Max made by Italian futurists on a bad acid trip. In Thousands of Eyes, three storylines join together for a terrifying apocalyptic thriller in which a velocity-worshipping cult work to bring forth a new world via the blood-soaked pistons of a classic muscle car. The novel begins with a father and son on the run, desperate to prevent the end of their world; next, we encounter a group of metalheads after an act of violence allows them to receive messages from beyond, and finally, we wander the wasteland resulting from their actions, where man and machine have fully melded.

Ryan Burruss, American Crow
(Counterpoint)
HAUNTED HISTORY

American Crow is set in a hastily constructed suburb on the edge of DC,  where evil lurks behind the veneer of normality, alcohol numbs the nightmares, violence rains down upon the weak and defenseless, and an epic showdown looms. Throw a mysterious, muscular stranger into this boiling cauldron of resentment and repression, add some romantic tension and dysfunctional family drama, throw in a little hinterland hijinks, and you’ve got  a historical horror that packs an emotional wallop.

Caitlin Starling, Milkteeth
(St Martin’s)
VAMPIRES

Beatrice is a vampire, and she’s not only a vampire; she is a broodmother, which is like an RA for new vampires. She basically helps first-year vampires come to terms with their new existences. Managing two is really hard… but when a third shows up, all hell breaks loose—in the sense that a strange and seemingly monstrous transformation befalls Beatrice, herself. I’ve been thinking a lot about “motherhood” lately, so Milkteeth provided me with some fascinating food for thought.–OR

Stephen Graham Jones, Off the Reservation
(Saga)
HAUNTED HISTORY

Stephen Graham Jones returns to the world of The Only Good Indians, as the surviving characters accept a mission to rebury a native child who died at a notorious residential school; unfortunately there’s a dark spiritual presence that’s traveling with the soon-to-be-repatriated bones, and ready to wreak havoc along the journey.

Elizabeth Kostova, Mystery Play
(Ballantine)
VAMPIRES

Another great vampire novel, in a year that’s positively full of them! Elizabeth Kostova’s upcoming take on Dracula draws inspiration from both 19th-century theater and the historical horrors of Vlad the Impaler, for an elegant tribute to an iconic story. Mystery Play feels a bit like the Booth family wandered into The Secret History and started eating everyone (and that’s a compliment). Fans of Kostova, historical fiction, and supernatural thrillers should all find much to enjoy—this is one of those books that makes it very difficult to set a demarcation point between mystery and horror.

Will Maclean, Solace House
(Grove Press)
HAUNTED HOUSE/COSMIC HORROR

In this exceptional new novel, a group of university students have an unusual summer job, cleaning out an old Victorian house that, they soon learn, contains more secrets than anyone has guessed. Maclean handles the action skillfully, with just the right combination of suspense and suggestion, and with a cast of characters that brings to mind some of the high water marks of dark academia.–DM

Kevin Johnson, ‘Twas the Night
(William Morrow)
HOLIDAY HORROR/SATIRE/FOLK HORROR

The most entertaining vision of Christmas horror since Santa’s Slay, this book also has the creepiest Santa since Jack Skellington took over Christmastown. Johnson’s snarky take on the most beautiful time of the year follows a mysterious woman claiming to be a journalist as she sets up camp in a forgotten little village terrorized by a spidery Santa and his brutish reindeer. No one from the outside has ever found the village without an invitation, and no one ever, ever leaves, but the Katniss-like intruder has a plan that will put an end to the slave-labor workshops of the North Pole and their endless appetite for the village’s children once and for all.

Nick Medina, Savage Lake
(Berkley)
SUPERNATURAL THRILLER/FOLK HORROR

Nick Medina writes gripping horror-thrillers braided with Native American folklore, and Savage Lake might be his best yet (though that’s saying something, because Indian Burial Ground was really great. Savage Lake is about a mother, Nell, and a horror-movie-loving son, Oscar, who return to the lakeside cabin where Nell believes part of her once died. They need to fix it up, sell it, and then be done with it forever… but when they get there, the local Native American tribe has the area blocked off, and things start to seem very… wrong. Including, suddenly, his mom. Terrifying. –OR

Lyndsay Faye, Raven
(Mysterious Press)
GOTHIC

Lyndsay Faye’s new novel is a delightful romp through the Gothic, antebellum mid-Atlantic; it tells the story of a young woman shuffling from one temporary home to another after the death of her beloved mother. She passes from a theater troupe through the homes of strange relatives to a laudanum-permeated Baltimore townhouse, and eventually a large manor house where she meets a like-minded young man interested in the occult, searching for an Elixir of life that might help his ghostly invalid cousin. And at some point along the way… our heroine is murdered. Read this book and you’ll be bored nevermore. –OR

Jonathan Edward Durham, Winterset Hollow
(Union Square)
FOLK HORROR

In this reversal-of-power parable of folk horror, a group of twenty-somethings obsessed with a children’s book (equal parts Beatrix Potter and Watership Down) gather together on the island that inspired their favorite work of fiction. The first surprise: the hosts of the gathering appear to be the same anthropomorphic woodland creatures that populated the novel. The second surprise: the denizens of the estate are far from fans, of either the book or its long afterlife, and they want nothing less than bloody vengeance against all who appreciate that vapid storybook enough to arrive in their fortress of misery, from whence they may finally escape (if they can only collect enough bodies).

Alex T. Singer, Angel Country
(Saga)
BODY HORROR/ COSMIC HORROR

Angels! They’re back—and they’re weirder than ever (See Daniel Krauss’s Angel Down or Natasha Pulley’s The Salt King for proof of concept). In Angel Country, angels are not numerous, but terrifying; some are covered in eyes, some are covered in mouths, and some are formerly human yet irrevocably changed by their contact with the host (usually in a nasty body horror way, wherein their organs are rearranged and their bones won’t stop growing). Singer’s grotesque magnum opus is also an excellently crafted alternative history full of sly little callouts to the scammers, strivers, and scientists of turn-of-the-century America, include a memorable appearance from a violently transformed P.T. Barnum and his now-feral colony of circus elephants. The story begins as a tale of stolen research, when an academic goes after her longtime partner and her proprietary technology for communicating with angels, but swiftly becomes a far more gruesome takedown of gilded age greed and its technological enablers.

Jane Schoenbrun, Public Access Afterworld
(Hogarth)
TECHNOHORROR/COSMIC HORROR

This book is awesome! Jane Schoenbrun is already well-known for their films, and this book is just as awesome as their growing ouevre. In Public Access Afterworld, two lonely suburban teens see something strange in the static late one night as the nation finally makes the switch from analogue to digital and become obsessed with uncovering the meaning behind the disturbing images. Their search takes them on a journey that leaves one a fugitive and the other missing, presumed dead. A decade and a half later, a content moderator at a tech company comes across the same staticky messages, linked to hundreds of disappearances and underpinned by a vast conspiracy. So good!!!!

Desirée de Fez, Don’t Leave Her Alone
Translated by Lizzie Davis
(Putnam)
BODY HORROR

Emmeshed parenting gets a cosmic horror twist in this psychological study of mothers, daughters, and the tentacles that bind. A grandmother, her daughters, and their daughters, find their codependency becoming literal after a strange encounter at a shopping mall. In an interview with Lizzie Davis, de Fez described the book as a cross between her mother and David Cronenberg, which is epic.

Kelley Armstrong, Dive Bar at the End of the Road
(St Martin’s)
HIGH-CONCEPT HORROR/FOLK HORROR

Kelley Armstrong has been a rising voice in thrillers for years, and now she’s ready to make her name in horror. In Dive Bar at the End of the Road, five strangers end up stranded in a bar after a downed tree cuts off their detour route. Something appears to be lurking in the forest surrounding, something terrible, and each stranger has increasingly fearful encounters with the strange presence as they try to escape their predicament and get back on the road (or, at least, call for assistance in towing each of their totaled cars—the forest critter really wants everyone to have a car accident in this book). An intriguing supernatural mystery that’s also a pulse-pounding thriller, Armstrong’s latest is her best yet!

Elaine Vilar Madruga, What the Forest Devours
Translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn
(HarperVia)
BODY HORROR/FEMINIST HORROR

At the edge of a forest, a small community has taken refuge, their precarious existence ensured through regular—and heart-rending—sacrifices. The forest regularly demands the flesh of a child, and it’s up to the women living just outside the ancient trees to act as brood-mares and exchange their young for a corresponding gift from the trees (egg-laying hens, for example). But the arrival of a hugely pregnant interloper disrupts the cruel symmetry of the forest’s give-and-take, throwing the necessity of sacrifice into question and putting the community’s survival in jeopardy.

Kat Dunn, Rottenheart
(Zando)
GOTHIC

Swounds, Rottenheart is fun! It’s a Gothic, Sapphic, and matriarchal twist on Hamlet—about a young woman, Odette, whose life is turned upside down after the death of her mother, the assumption of her family’s title by her aunt-turned-stepmother, and, you know, “the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” All of this is before she experiences confirmation of her “dread of something after death”; her mother’s ghost is haunting her home—and she, stressful and needy in life, and now parasitic in her afterlife—is not happy. –OR

Kennedy Cole, There Used to Be People Here
(Berkley)
SPECULATIVE HORROR

When a queer man dies in a gay bar restroom under, shall we say, unusual circumstances (a giant worm emerges from his mouth and leaves behind the mere husk of a body), two detectives go looking for answers, only to stumble upon a government conspiracy to cover up an alien crash site with deadly cargo. Kennedy Cole uses the language of science fiction to explore the experience of queerness as a person of color; one of the detectives is the first Black policeman in his small southern town, and he’s as drawn to the alien as he is repelled by his colleagues. A moody, atmospheric take on the first encounter thriller, with plenty of body horror thrown in (or perhaps, bursting out).

Nicholas Binge, Exhumation
(Riverhead)
HIGH-CONCEPT HORROR/LITERAL HELLSCAPES

Nicholas Binge’s latest high-concept horror is split between two storylines: a detective tracking down a missing woman in a strangely blank city, and two sisters conducting scientific experiment with disturbing spiritual implications. If you like China Mieville’s The City in the City, but wish it had way more twists, then this book is for you.

Brian Allen Carr, Motherfucking Sharks
(Clash Books)
SPLATTERGORE

I believe the title is self-explanatory. If you need another reason to check this out, it’s a reissue which means at least two people cared enough about a book titled “Motherfucking Sharks” to publish it. Enough said.