We’ve officially made it to Spooky Season. September is here, the gateway to Halloween is open, and that means in the horror publishing world, everyone is putting out some of their absolute best.
This fall in horror, we’ve got the return of some amazing novelists (including one we’ve waited a quarter century for), new work from rising stars, new installments in addictive series, and much more. So, from slashers to ghosts to some very frightening humans, here are the 25 horror books we can’t wait to read this fall.
Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley
Release date: September 2 from Poisoned Pen Press
Why We’re Excited: Through books like Curse of the Reaper and Candy Cain Kills, Brian McAuley has made a name as a keen crafter of slasher stories. Now, he turns that talent on a wellness retreat, where a killer is picking off attendees one by one. That’s all we need to know to recognize that this is going to be a bloody good time.
Publisher’s Description: Hannah has been running from her demons ever since she emerged from a harrowing wilderness trip without her fiancé. No one knows exactly what happened the day Ben died, and Hannah would like to keep it that way… even if his ghost still haunts her with vivid waking nightmares that are ruining her life. So when her friend group gets an exclusive invitation to a restorative spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree, Hannah reluctantly agrees in search of a fresh start.
Despite her skepticism of the strange Guru Pax and his belief in the supernatural world, Hannah soon finds healing through all the yoga, sound baths, and hot springs offered at the tech-free haven. But this peaceful journey of self-discovery quickly descends into a violent fight for self-preservation when a mysterious killer starts picking off retreat attendees in increasingly gruesome ways. As the body count rises and Hannah’s sanity frays, she’ll have to confront her dark past and uncover the true nature of a ruthless monster hellbent on killing her vibe for good.
Moonflow by Bitter Karella
Release date: September 2 from Run For It
Why We’re Excited: It’s hard to describe Bitter Karella’s Moonflow, but trust me when I tell you this hallucinogenic, haunting, brutal ride is one you won’t want to miss. It’s one of those books that simultaneously feeds all of your horror fan urges while remaining singular and almost unclassifiable.
Publisher’s Description: They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of disappearing hikers and strange cults that worship the divine feminine abound.
Sarah is a trans woman who makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. But as she descends deeper, she realizes she’s not alone. Something in the forest is waking up. It’s hungry—and it wants her.
Acquired Taste by Clay McLeod Chapman
Release date: September 9 from Titan
Why We’re Excited: If you only know Clay McLeod Chapman from novels like Ghost Eaters and Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, it’s time to get to know his short fiction. Acquired Taste is an absolute blast of a collection, full of unforgettable imagery packed into tightly crafted, page-turning gems of short fiction. For many readers, it’ll be Chapman like you’ve never seen him before, and that’s a very good thing.
Publisher’s Description: A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one.
From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own.
Packed full of humanity, humour and above all, relentless creeping dread, Acquired Taste is a timely descent into the mind of one of modern horror’s finest authors.
Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson
Release date: September 9 from Random House
Why We’re Excited: The Fever House duology cemented Keith Rosson as one of the best writers of horror and modern crime fiction working right now, and with Coffin Moon, it feels like he’s leveled up. Set in 1975, this story of a Vietnam veteran in a deadly showdown with a vampire reads like Elmore Leonard wrote Near Dark, and if you’re new to Rosson’s prose, it’s a great place to start.
Publisher’s Description: It’s the winter of 1975, and Portland, Oregon, is all sleet and neon. Duane Minor is back home after a tour in Vietnam, a bartender just trying to stay sober; save his marriage with his wife, Heidi; and connect with his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, now that he’s responsible for raising her. Things aren’t easy, but Minor is scraping by.
Then a vampire walks into his bar and ruins his life.
When Minor crosses John Varley, a killer who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon, Varley brutally retaliates by murdering Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. What’s left of their splintered family is united by only one desire: vengeance.
So begins a furious, frenzied pursuit across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. From grimy alleyways to desolate highways to snow-lashed plains, Minor and Julia are cast into the dark orbit of undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men transfixed by Varley’s ferocity. Everyone’s out for blood.
Gritty, unforgettable, and emotionally devastating, Coffin Moon asks what will be left of our humanity when grief transmutes into violence, when monsters wear human faces, and when our thirst for revenge eclipses everything else.
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
Release date: September 9 from Berkley
Why We’re Excited: Rachel Harrison’s latest retains the same charming, keenly observant voice we’ve come to love through books like Black Sheep and So Thirsty, this time honed in on the saga of a young fashion influencer who has inherited a possessed house. Harrison remains one of our finest contemporary horror voices, making Play Nice another must-read.
Publisher’s Description: Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parents’ messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.
After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.
We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca
Release date: September 9 from Titan
Why We’re Excited: The first book in LaRocca’s Burnt Sparrow trilogy of novels might end up being the most brutal book released by a major publisher this year. Combining small-town secrets with absolutely unflinching studies in transgression and depravity, it’s the boldest and best thing LaRocca’s written yet.
Publisher’s Description: The lives of those residing in the isolated town of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire, are forever altered after three faceless entities arrive on Christmas morning to perform a brutal act of violence—a senseless tragedy that can never be undone. While the townspeople grieve their losses and grapple with the aftermath of the attack, a young teenage boy named Rupert Cromwell is forced to confront the painful realities of his family situation. Once relationships become intertwined and more carnage ensues as a result of the massacre, the town residents quickly learn that true retribution is futile, cruelty is earned, and certain thresholds must never be crossed no matter what.
Engrossing, atmospheric, and unsettling, this is a devastating story of a small New England community rocked by an unforgivable act of violence. Writing with visceral intensity and profound eloquence, LaRocca journeys deep into the dark heart of Burnt Sparrow, leaving you chilled to the bone and wanting more.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
Release date: September 9 from Saga Press
Why We’re Excited: After tearing open his own place in the young adult horror space, Andrew Joseph White makes his adult debut this fall with this novel, described as “Alien meets Midsommar.” Frankly, that’s all the encouragement I need, but look at the plot description and you’ll see what White is determined to keep pushing his imagination into deeper, darker territory, and that’s good news for all of us.
Publisher’s Description: Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.
Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca
Fiend by Alma Katsu
Release date: September 16 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Why We’re Excited: Alma Katsu’s historical horror novels like The Hunger and The Fervor are some of the best releases of the past decade, but now she’s turning her attention to contemporary terrors for the first time. Centered on a wealthy, powerful family with a demon in their corner, and what happens when that family starts to come apart, Fiend marks a compelling new direction from one of horror’s finest voices.
Publisher’s Description: The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed.
At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.
Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper
Release date: September 16 from Titan
Why We’re Excited: Hailey Piper has long been one of the most prolific horror short fiction writers of her generation, and now the readers who’ve followed Piper through cosmic horror, dark fantasy, and contemporary terror will get to experience a collage of her short prose through this devilish collection. Piper’s imagination is one of the most potent in the horror space right now, and this book will no doubt offer an incredible cross-section of everything her mind can do.
Publisher’s Description: Thirteen coming-of-rage stories the way only Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper can tell them—wildly inventive, brilliantly imaginative, and completely and utterly enthralling.
A vicious group of college upperclassmen prey on the freshman girls in “Why We Keep Exploding”; across the world, something is mutating adolescents into bizarre creatures in “The Turning”; a girl on a night out realizes a bizarre cop is hunting her in “The Long Flesh of the Law”; and in the acclaimed novella “Benny Rose, the Cannibal King”, a Halloween prank goes horribly wrong when a murderous ghost steps out of an urban legend and into the real world.
These stories take our most difficult years of transformation and twist them into new and terrifying shapes, where the monsters are real and you’ll do whatever it takes to get away, or get even.
The Whistler by Nick Medina
Release date: September 16 from Berkley
Why We’re Excited: One of the best writers of Indigenous horror working right now, Nick Medina takes on what might be his most conceptually challenging book yet with The Whistler. It’s about a ghost hunter who’s been left a quadriplegic after an accident, and what it’s like confronting the thing that haunts you when you’ve already lost so much. Whether you’re new to Medina or looking for another banger from the author, don’t miss it.
Publisher’s Description: Henry Hotard was on the verge of fame, gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost-hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now, he’s learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents’ care while he recovers.
And he’s being haunted.
His girlfriend, Jade, insists he just needs time to adjust to his new reality as a quadriplegic, that it’s his traumatized mind playing tricks on him, but Henry knows better. As the specter haunting him creeps closer each night, Henry battles to find a way to endure, to rid himself of the horror stalking him. Worried that this dread might plague him forever, he realizes the only way to exile his phantom is by confronting his troubled past and going back to the events that led to his injury.
It all started when he whistled at night….
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
Release date: September 23 from Berkley
Why We’re Excited: Sarah Gailey can mine the subtle emotional depths of horror landscapes as well as anyone working in the genre today. That’s reason enough to pick up Spread Me, but throw in erotic horror and sci-fi horror, and this has to make your list.
Publisher’s Description: Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach.
When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it’s there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can’t be ignored any longer.
One by one, Kinsey’s team realizes the thing they’re studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate….
The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi
Release date: September 30 from Nightfire
Why We’re Excited: Philip Fracassi’s latest novel starts with a simple setup: It’s a slasher set in a retirement home, with a senior citizen for a Final Girl. I’m sold already, but if you need a little more reason to pick this one up, consider that Fracassi has been turning out great work like The Boys in the Valley for years now, and it’s time for his audience to grow.
Publisher’s Description: Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home.
When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn’t too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age!
Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can’t help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister?
Together with her best friend Miller, Rose begins to investigate. The further she digs, the more convinced she becomes: there’s a killer on the loose at Autumn Springs, and if she isn’t careful, Rose may be their next victim.
The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt
Release date: September 30 from St. Martin’s Press
Why We’re Excited: Anyone who’s heard me talk about horror knows that I’m a sucker for cursed film narratives, and Michael Wehunt’s got a great one here. The story of a film blogger who’s forever haunted by what happened when they got too close to one frightening location, The October Film Haunt promises to say a lot not just about horror, but about the way we perceive it, and how it can change our lives forever. It’s one of those books I’ll be fascinated by for months, I’m sure.
Publisher’s Description: Ten years ago, Jorie Stroud was the rising star of the October Film Haunt – a trio of horror enthusiasts who camped out at the filming locations of their favorite scary movies, sharing their love through their popular blog. But after a night in the graveyard from Proof of Demons – perhaps the most chilling cult film ever made, directed by the enigmatic Hélène Enriquez – everything unraveled.
Now, Jorie has built an isolated life with her young son in Vermont. In the devastating wake of her viral, truth-stretching Proof of Demons blog entry — hysteria, internet backlash, and the death of a young woman — Jorie has put it all, along with her intense love for the horror genre, behind her.
Until a videotape arrives in the mail. Jorie fears someone might be filming her. And the “Rickies” – Enriquez obsessives who would do anything for the reclusive director – begin to cross lines in shocking ways. It seems Hélène Enriquez is making a new kind of sequel…and Jorie is her final girl.
As the dangers grow even more unexpected and strange, Jorie must search for answers before the Proof of the movie’s title finds her and takes everything she loves.
Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer
Release date: October 7 from Quirk Books
Why We’re Excited: Jenny Kiefer’s This Wretched Valley is one of the best horror debuts of at least the last five years, so naturally I’m pumped to see what she does with her follow-up. The title is amazing, the premise is fun, and Kiefer’s writing is so tactile and immersive that I’m sure we’ll all be wrapped up in this world, whether we’re crafters or not.
Publisher’s Description: Ruth is trapped. She’s stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job at New Creations—a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in Kill Devil.
In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store—and attack her. As Ruth fights for her life using only the crafting supplies at hand, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her but the entire town.
ITCH! by Gemma Amor
Release date: October 9 from Hodder & Stoughton
Why We’re Excited: Another one of those rising horror names that deserves more attention in 2025, Gemma Amor’s given us all a reason to get excited with ITCH!, the story of a woman whose mind and body are infested after an unexpected brush with death. Amor’s work is always frightening, textured, and layered, and this one will no doubt get under our skin. Pun very much intended.
Publisher’s Description: Josie is at rock bottom, living a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean. But the tall, dense pine trees are not the only things casting shadows across her skin.
When Josie stumbles across a decaying, ant-infested body in the woods, she plummets into a downward spiral, facing uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past – all whilst battling a growing infestation of her mind . . . and her flesh.
Desperate to solve the case, Josie scratches the surface of an age-old mystery – a masked predator stalks the forest around Ellwood, a place deeply gripped by folklore. As the village prepares for its annual festival, Josie gets closer and closer to unveiling a monster, and begins to ask herself:
Are these dark crawling insects leading her to uncover the truth? Or is she their next victim?
The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling
Release date: October 14 from St. Martin’s Press
Why We’re Excited: Caitlin Starling has already delivered one of 2025’s best horror novels with The Starving Saints, and now she’s back with a “hospital gothic” about a place full of dark secrets and even darker body horror from one of our most viscerally satisfying genre writers.
Publisher’s Description: Margaret lives with a rare autoimmune condition that has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can—until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial.
The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital.
Unsure of what’s real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview’s halls.
Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud
Release date: October 21 from Nightfire
Why We’re Excited: No one’s doing it like Nathan Ballingrud, and this fall he’s back with the much-anticipated sequel to the hypnotic Crypt of the Moon Spider. If you haven’t read that book, you need to track it down right now, because the Ray Bradbury of Horror no doubt has something even darker and stranger in store this time.
Publisher’s Description: There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp’s brain. One is in a jar stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home to the woman he loves. The other half is still locked in his body, hanging from a wall in Barrowfield Home on Earth’s own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage.
On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed Cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called the Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronaut-clergy inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while more Moon Spiders prepare to be born.
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Release date: October 21 from William Morrow
Why We’re Excited: Joe Hill’s first novel in nearly a decade is also one of his most ambitious, a massive, sweeping tale that you can get happily lost in until well after Halloween. There are a lot of great Joe Hill trademarks in here, but you can also feel him stretching himself with King Sorrow, pushing his imagination to new heights, and that makes this a book you have to check out.
Publisher’s Description: Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.
Mother-Eating by Jess Hagemann
Release date: October 28 from Ghoulish
Why We’re Excited: Jess Hagemann’s sophomore novel is pitched as a retelling of Marie Antoinette’s reign set in present-day Austin, TX. That, plus the backing of indie horror publisher Ghoulish Books, is kind of all I need to know to get into this dark gem in waiting.
Publisher’s Description: A modern retelling of Marie Antoinette’s reign as the queen of France, set in Austin, Texas. Instead of marrying her daughter off to King Louis, Resa Habsburg sells Mary Toni to a pseudo-religious torture-happy sex cult in exchange for a TV contract.
Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski
Release date: October 28 from Pantheon
Why We’re Excited: The author of House of Leaves has finally returned with a new novel after a quarter-century. That should be all the reason you need to get excited for this one. I can’t wait to see what unfolds within Tom’s Crossing.
Publisher’s Description: While folks still like to focus on the crimes that shocked the small city of Orvop, Utah, back in the fall of 1982, not to mention the trials that followed, far more remember the adventure that took place beyond municipal lines.
For sure no one expected the dead to rise, but they did. No one expected the mountain to fall either, but it did. No one expected an act of courage so great, and likewise so appalling, that it still staggers the heart and mind of anyone who knows anything about the Katanogos massif, to say nothing of Pillars Meadow.
As one Orvop high school teacher described that extraordinary feat just days before she died, Fer sure no one expected Kalin March to look Old Porch in the eye and tell him: You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards.
The Long, Low Whistle by Laurel Hightower
Release date: November 4 from Shortwave
Laurel Hightower has already tackled cryptid horror with the gripping Below, but now she returns to the subject in an entirely new way with the latest entry in Shortwave Publishing’s endlessly entertaining Killer VHS series. If you want a monster story that’s a bit of a throwback and yet brimming with fresh horror energy, look out for this one.
Publisher’s Description: The sound of the whistle that split Patricia’s life in two still haunts her two decades later, its echoes leaving their indelible stamp on everything she does. The rift caused by her father’s unsolved death haunts her, pushing her to ever more dangerous attempts to put his memory to rest. Breaking into mausoleums in the dead of night isn’t how she pictured her life, but she’ll do almost anything to know what happened.
When a group of amateur cryptid hunters shows up in her small town, Trish doesn’t hesitate to take what might be her only chance to find answers, even if they’re searching in the last place she should be. A sealed, abandoned mine; tight underground passages filled with unseen creatures, and impenetrable darkness await the crew, but it’s the only path forward, and Trish won’t leave her father’s legacy buried, delving ever deeper into danger to where that whistle still moans.
Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World by Cullen Bunn
Release date: November 11 from Gallery
Why We’re Excited: Cullen Bunn has, through work like Harrow County, risen to become one of the most important horror creators in the world of comics. Now he turns to prose with this tale packed with the kind of dark, small town secrets that made so many of his comics so compelling. I can’t wait to dig into this book.
Publisher’s Description: The bodies are stacking up on Wilson Island.
The town’s sheriff has his suspicions but no genuine evidence for an arrest, even as the murders continue and appear increasingly ritualistic in nature. And when an arrest is finally made, all hell breaks loose—literally—as a terrifying horror rises to envelop the town. Soon it’s all up to an unforgettable and motley group of residents to band together and eliminate an ancient evil in a desperate struggle for survival.
Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
Release date: December 1 from 47North
Why We’re Excited: One of horror’s most deft craftspeople returns with a standalone novel about a woman escaping something dark only to find something even darker, and stranger, out in the desert. T. Kingfisher knows how to build a fantasy world and populate it with horror, and Snake-Eater looks to be the latest gem in a career full of them.
Publisher’s Description: With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind.
Because in Quartz Creek, there’s a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena’s ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena’s house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn’t ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can’t begin to imagine. And when Selena’s search for answers leads her to journal entries that her aunt left behind, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: It’s the haunting grounds of an ancient god known simply as “Snake-Eater,” who her late aunt made a promise to that remains unfulfilled.
Snake-Eater has taken a liking to Selena, an obsession of sorts that turns sinister. And now that Selena is the new owner of his home, he’s hell-bent on collecting everything he’s owed.
Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment by Mo Moshaty
Release date: October 21 from Tenebrous
Why We’re Excited: As a writer, as an editor, as a thinker in the horror space, Mo Moshaty has become an essential, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she does with this collection. Tarot-themed horror is nothing new, but Moshaty’s voice and mind for scary stories is so strong and singular that this will definitely read as something we’ve never experienced before.
Publisher’s Description: The Tarot holds mystery, prediction, and unsettling omens for those who practice, divine, or are sensitive to it.
A turn of the cards weaves Clairviolence through space and time to delve into the stories of those shaken by life-shattering choices that threaten to tear their souls apart:
A warring couple is forced to reconcile during the end of the world.
A young man is drawn into the surreal prison-scape of an elderly woman.
A dead woman’s curse travels miles and decades to bring her killer to justice.
Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment unearths one novelette and ten short stories—each one exclusive to this volume—beneath the exterior of an otherwise charmed and quiet existence.
Midnight Somewhere by Johnny Compton
Release date: December 9 from Blackstone
Why We’re Excited: The author of The Spite House and Devils Kill Devils returns with a new short fiction collection that’s been compared to both Stephen King and Junji Ito. Given how much I already enjoy Compton’s writing, that’s more than enough to get me interested in one of the biggest horror releases to close out 2025.
Publisher’s Description: A man gets into a car that can take him anywhere he can imagine—including the past, into the worst mistake of his life, a memory he does not want to relive, cannot escape, and is even more afraid to alter …
A seemingly harmless, forgettable film about “alien hand syndrome” inspires a wave of self-harm among viewers—and even stranger things among those who become obsessed with it …
A woman tries to bring her dead lover to life through a macabre ritual that requires attacking his corpse. Is it because she longs to be with him again … or because the two of them have unfinished business?
The assorted characters in this thrilling collection encounter horrors that range from mysterious to murderous, discovering that darkness can find anyone, anywhere, at any hour of the day. After all, it’s always Midnight Somewhere …
Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire who’s been writing about entertainment for more than a decade. His writing about movies, TV, comics, and more regularly appears at SYFY WIRE, Looper, Mental Floss, Decider, BookPage, and other outlets. He lives in Austin, Texas, and when he’s not writing he’s usually counting the days until Christmas.
