Archives de catégorie : Horror

RED RABBIT d’Alex Grecian

From bestselling author Alex Grecian comes a folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts—and where death is always just around the bend..

RED RABBIT
by Alex Grecian
Tor Nightfire, September 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit. On the road to Burden County, they’re joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure – but no sense of purpose – and a recently widowed schoolteacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger. Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along the dusty trail. But the crew is determined to get that bounty, or die trying. Written with the devilish cadence of Stephen Graham Jones and the pulse-pounding brutality of Nick Cutter, Red Rabbit is a supernatural adventure of luck and misfortune.

Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad series: The Yard and its sequels The Black Country, The Devil’s Workshop, The Harvest Man, and Lost and Gone Forever; as well as the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers, and the ebook The Blue Girl. He has also written multiple award-winning graphic novels, including Proof, and Rasputin.

“This is a book I’m going to be pressing into the hands of every reader I know. It’s an epic, sometimes brutal, sometimes tender, but always surprising gallop of a book, populated by characters I found myself caring deeply about. RED RABBIT was impossible to put down.” —Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get In Trouble

“Echoing True Grit, The Good Lord Bird, and any number of classic tales of terror, Alex Grecian’s RED RABBIT is a riotous, Boschian, gun-slinging marvel.” —Laird Hunt, author of In the House in the Dark of the Woods

THE NIGHT GUEST de Hildur Knútsdóttir

An eerie and ensnaring speculative novel by an acclaimed Icelandic author.

THE NIGHT GUEST
by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Translated into English by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor, January 2024
(via The Gernert Company)

Iðunn is in yet another doctor’s office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something’s not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven’t revealed any cause.
When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same — have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.
Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .
What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?

“THE NIGHT GUEST is evocative and powerfully restrained. At times chilling, at others harrowingly familiar, THE NIGHT GUEST is a fascinating examination of femininity, agency, and self, and a genuinely heart-pounding read.”—Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

Hildur Knútsdóttir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland. She has lived in Spain, Germany, and Taiwan and studied literature and creative writing at The University of Iceland. She writes fiction both for adults and teenagers, as well as short fiction, plays, and screenplays. Hildur is known for her evocative fantastical fiction and spine-chilling horror. She lives in Reykjavík with her husband, their two daughters, and a puppy called Uggi.

SECRET OF MCKINLEY MANSION de K.F. Breene

In the vein of Stephanie Perkins’ There’s Someone Inside Your House, a teenage girl with supernatural abilities must help her friends survive the night in a haunted mansion filled with malevolent spirits.

SECRET OF MCKINLEY MANSION
by K.F. Breene
Hazy Dawn Press, March 2018
(via JABberwocky)

It was a dark and stormy night… It’s no easy job being the town nutcase. Ella knows from experience. She’s grown up in a quaint little place with people that pretend the extraordinary isn’t happening around them. That ignore the bumps in the night, and won’t talk about doors closing by themselves or items moving mysteriously.
They also won’t talk about the old woman who haunts the streets, long in her grave but for the nights when a particularly bad storm blows through. Those who do are fibbers, begging for attention.
But Ella knows it is no lie – when the lightning cracks and the rain thrashes, someone goes missing. A child, lost to the night. There is no breaking and entering. No foul play. No clue as to where they’ve gone.
Urban legend says that if the old woman stops in front of your house, you’re next.
Well Ella has been next for years. She’s resisted the urge to run out into the darkness with everything she has. Resisted that old mansion up on the hill, beckoning her. Resisted giving into people saying she’s crazy.
Until a handsome new boy with a troubled past moves across the street. Suddenly Ella isn’t the only one haunted by the old woman. Except, it’s not clear if the new boy is here to help Ella…or help the woman drag Ella up to the mansion.
You’ll want to turn on your nightlight for this one.

K.F. Breene is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Amazon Most Sold Charts, and #1 Kindle Store bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and fantasy novels who has sold over three million books. When she’s not penning stories about magic and what goes bump in the night, she’s sipping wine and planning shenanigans. She currently resides with her husband, two children, and an out-of-work treadmill in northern California.

THIS DELICIOUS DEATH de Kayla Cottingham

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Dearest Darkest comes another incredible sapphic horror. When four best friends with a hunger for human flesh attend a music festival in the desert they discover a murderous plot to expose and vilify the girls and everyone like them. This summer is going to get gory.

THIS DELICIOUS DEATH
by Kayla Cottingham
Sourcebooks Fire, April 2023

Three years ago, the melting of arctic permafrost released a pathogen of unknown origin into the atmosphere, causing a small percentage of people to undergo a transformation that became known as the Hollowing. Those impacted slowly became intolerant to normal food and were only able to gain sustenance by consuming the flesh of other human beings. Those who went without flesh quickly became feral, turning on their friends and family. However, scientists were able to create a synthetic version of human meat that would satisfy the hunger of those impacted by the Hollowing. As a result, humanity slowly began to return to normal, albeit with lasting fear and distrust for the people they’d pejoratively dubbed ghouls.
Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are all ghouls living in Southern California. As a last hurrah before their graduation they decided to attend a musical festival in the desert. They have a cooler filled with hard seltzers and SynFlesh and are ready to party.
But on the first night of the festival Val goes feral, and ends up killing and eating a boy. As other festival guests start disappearing around them the girls soon discover someone is drugging ghouls and making them feral. And if they can’t figure out how to stop it, and soon, no one at the festival is safe..

Kayla Cottingham is a YA author and librarian. Her first book, My Dearest Darkest, was a New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Kayla lives in Boston where she loves to go hiking in the woods, play RPGs, and snuggle on the couch with her ridiculously large black cat, Squid.

THE SPITE HOUSE de Johnny Compton

A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father’s love, Johnny Compton’s The Spite House is a stunning debut by a horror master in the making—The Babadook meets A Head Full of Ghosts in Texas Hill Country.

THE SPITE HOUSE
by Johnny Compton
Tor Nightfire, February 2023

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he’s desperate for money—it’s not easy to find steady, safe work when you can’t provide references, you can’t stay in one place for long, and you’re paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.
When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house’s horrors don’t drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them.
The job calls to Eric, not just because there’s a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it’ll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running.

“Ever since I devoured Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House as a boy, I’ve loved a good ghost story, and The Spite House gave me those same chills. Johnny Compton has built a haunted house that is creepy as hell, the bricks and mortar oozing not just spite, but evil. Here’s a supernatural thriller that will have you watching the windows and doors as you read.”
―Chris Bohjalian, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness

Johnny Compton’s short stories have appeared in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast and many other markets. He is an HWA member and operates the podcast Healthy Fears, which covers how our fears are explored through horror fiction. THE SPITE HOUSE is his first novel.