As an editor for this website, I’ve always enjoyed using my platform for my petty and deeply arbitrary antipathies, including my hatred of lakes and summer camps, and along those lines: cabins, also not so great. They can be, in fact, very creepy. And sometimes, they have daddy longlegs that drop onto your head while you’re in the middle of using the bathroom. Most of them, like, don’t even have air conditioning. And then there are the cabins in the books below, occupied not only by a plethora of arachnids but also supernatural powers, monstrous entities, traumatic memories, and no working televisions whatsoever. It’s clear that the pandemic has influenced the flood of haunted house narratives published over the past few years, but less acknowledged is the influence on types of getaway narratives that I’m highlighting below. This list is not an exhaustive list of cabin-oriented crime and horror, but rather, a look at recent and upcoming novels in which everything is already terrible and then the cabin makes things worse. The moral of the story is, when you feel like venturing to a remote outpost in the woods that was also once home to a series of grisly murders, you should instead stay inside and read a book.
Matthew Lyons, A Mask of Flies
(Tor Nightfire)
In Matthew Lyons’ propulsive new horror thriller, a bank robbery gone sideways forces one of the robbers to take the remnants of her gang, plus a hostage or two, to her old family cabin to recoup and recover. Upon arrival, they discover a VHS with terrifying metaphysical implications as Lyons takes a sharp left turn towards Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Lindy Ryan, Cold Snap
(Titan)
Like Gus Moreno’s This Thing Between Us, Ryan uses her cabin retreat as a method of exploring the isolation and claustrophobia of intense grief. The family at the center of Cold Snap has just lost their beloved patriarch, and Ryan’s newly widowed protagonist is taking her son and cat to their long-awaited cabin getaway over Christmas. She’s not totally sure of her grasp on reality—after all, she just lost her husband—but the metaphysical is about to get physical as the cabin visit goes violently awry.
Neena Viel, Listen to Your Sister
(St. Martin’s Griffin, February 2025)
Neena Viel’s well-titled debut takes us into a loving but dysfunctional group of siblings at moment of crisis, then turns the tension up to the max. Mid-twenties Calla Williams is burdened by her role as her youngest brother’s guardian, and resentful of the middle child for his ability to get out of care-giving, but she’s also so terrified of losing her closest family that she’s tortured each night by visions of her siblings dying. When her teenage charge gets in trouble for actions at a protest, she takes the three of them on the road to a rented cabin to let the air clear—bringing along her nightmares, and the potential to destroy not only the tight-knit family, but reality itself.
TJ Klune, The Bones Beneath My Skin
(Tor Books, February 2025)
Klune has crafted a moving story of found family in this X-Files-influenced thriller perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World. The Bones Beneath My Skin follows Nate, a journalist at loose ends, who finds a mysterious girl and her hunky bodyguard hiding out in his family’s summer cabin. He soon joins them in their dangerous quest to reunite her with her family, as her former captors follow in hot pursuit. As fast-paced as it is warm-hearted!
