Unsettling and deeply profound, this concise, not-quite-horror book, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata follows Keiko, a 36 year old convenience store worker, through a 24-7, living, breathing ecosystem, where she both finds her identity and then begins to question it as well as her role in Tokyo society. An entrancing read, Convenience Store Woman is about performing normalcy, reaching or evading society’s expectations, being human, and the satisfaction of a clear role.

Isabel Cañas’s debut novel The Hacienda is a gothic, supernatural, haunted house story set in 1823 rural Mexico following the Mexican War of Independence. Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca, others have said, which is a strikingly accurate comparison. The Hacienda is about indigeneity, mother-daughter relationships, colorism and caste, witchcraft and the Inquisition, budding (and forbidden) love, and the determination needed to survive being home.

Victor Lavalle’s seventh book, The Changeling (2017), is a surprising and deeply horrifying fairy tale planted firmly in modern day New York City about a family torn apart and the drive to piece it back together again.

In Julia Bartz’s The Writing Retreat, we follow a small group of young women writers taking a month-long residency in an old, country manor, hosted by an (in)famous author, Roza, whose motivations begin mysterious but evolve to be sinister. It’s a book about writers and the act of writing. With notes of Shirley Jackson and Hill House, The Writing Retreat is a thrilling, psychological ride about broken friendships, the creative process, queer desire, and scary stories.

An entrancing sequel to S.A Harian’s Briardark, Waywarden is a survival horror story set in a wilderness that does not adhere to the rules of physics.

S.A Harian’s Briardark is the first book in a horror series about a haunted wilderness— the Deadswitch— where space and time bend and darkness follows a group of researchers, there to study a glacier. An alluring horror read, Briardark is also a fascinating take on climate change, the science of life on earth, guilt, breakups, self purpose, and being lost.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s sixth novel Mexican Gothic is The Haunting of Hill House meets The Last of Us— a spell-binding and surprising story with depth, terror, and charisma.

Stephen Graham Jones’s heart wrenching novel The Only Good Indians follows a group of Blackfeet friends, haunted by a past elk hunting trip. Jones’s horror story rips at your soul, reminding us that mistakes can be deadly and that our forebears’ mistakes return to us. And an animal’s bloodthirsty vengeance— a mother animal’s bloodthirsty vengeance— is a different beast than a human’s.

Leopoldo Gout’s 2023 horror novel Piñata is a jaw-dropping contribution to the exorcism story sub-genre, playing with tropes we know and bringing in new scares that distinguish it among its counterparts. It’s about cursed artifacts, colonization, ancestral interconnectedness across time and space, rage, femicide, and sisterhood.

From Josh Malerman, the author of Bird Box, comes a collection of five spellbinding novellas called Spin a Black Yarn.

Acclaimed author Catriona Ward’s most recent novel, Looking Glass Sound, is about murder, the deception, thievery, and magic in the art of writing, witchcraft, the horror of the ocean, and the bonds of friendship.

Part mystery part horror, The Paleontologist is a fast-paced, thought-provoking story about chasing the truth, the expansiveness of geologic time, and the ripples of violence through the eras.

Tananarive Due’s most recent novel, The Reformatory, is a beyond-horrifying, semi-fictional story about a young man’s torturous imprisonment in the evil Gracetown School for Boys— nicknamed the Reformatory— and his family’s daring efforts in the face of Jim Crow era Florida to free him.

Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus is a thrilling coming-of-age horror story set in rural Montana in a deeply religious community called Kingdom of Pine, which owns and operates the most successful gay conversion camp in the country, Camp Damascus.

Divisive and provocative, Tell Me I’m Worthless is Alison Rumfitt’s debut novel about a fascist haunted house terrorizing Alice, a trans sex worker, Ila, an infamous TERF, and Hannah, the third wheel to Alice and Ila’s fucked up dynamic.

A Haunting on the Hill is a 2023 sequel to Shirley Jackson’s 1959 classic The Haunting of Hill House, but it is not written by Jackson. Both a disturbing and humorous voice, author Elizabeth Hand introduces us to a totally new cast of characters: a group of friends taking a residency at Hill House to rehearse a play called “Witching Night.” (Unlike the original, Hand’s book includes witches. A very fun addition.)

What would happen if, suddenly, a large swath of the population saw something that wasn’t there, something that makes them afraid enough to turn to violence deemed necessary?

If you’re looking for a good haunted house story but in a setting that’s not an old, abandoned, Victorian mansion, check out Horrorstor. 

This book reminds you why you may have disliked adults as a child. 

Jackson has the uncanny ability to plant horrifying images in your head.

Read along as we explore Appalachia and magical realism through two Kentucky texts: the novel, A Woman in Time and the videogame, Kentucky Route Zero.