Catriona Silvey’s Vervain Hollow is a masterclass in folk horror and psychological suspense. Through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, this cult horror novel weaves a tale of memory and magnetism that lingers long after the final page.
Search Results for: folk horror
If You Loved Fawn by C.N. Vair, Read These 10 Folk Horror Books Next
C.N. Vair’s Fawn is one of 2026’s most talked-about folk horror debuts, built around Tess Wynne, an Appalachian witch who rescues a red-mouthed, full-toothed fawn with unnatural appetites, and must decide what she is willing to become to protect what is hers. If that book has already got its teeth into you, this reading list was made for you. We’ve put together ten books that share Fawn’s DNA — from Emilia Hart’s multi-century witch saga Weyward to Cassandra Khaw’s blood-soaked fairy tale The Salt Grows Heavy to Genevieve Gornichec’s Norse folk horror The Witch’s Heart — each with a full mini-review. This is the definitive reading list for fans of folk horror, powerful witches, and women who bite back.
Blood in the Bricks: Urban Folk Horror That Crawls Out of the Pavement
Blood in the Bricks proves folk horror doesn’t need fields or standing stones to unsettle you. Neil Williamson’s anthology hauls the genre into the underground, the surgery ward and the skate park, with standout urban horror short stories from James Bennett, Dan Coxon and Ray Cluley. A bleak, brilliant collection that finds the uncanny in the everyday city.
Queens of the Crone Age by Tracy Fahey: The Finest Irish Folk Horror
Tracy Fahey’s Queens of the Crone Age (PS Publishing, 2026) wakes the Cailleach, the Hag of Beara, and threads standalone tales into one long incantation. My review digs into why this feminist folk horror collection, steeped in Irish mythology and the power of older women, is some of the boldest work of her career.
Steal Me by Helen Grant: A Folk Horror Novella That Reads You Back
Helen Grant’s Steal Me is a folk horror novella built on fairy-tale bones, set in a small Scottish town where a bookshop sells each customer the one thing they most want to hide. My review digs into the cursed bookshop, the Grimm folklore at its root, and why this Scottish Gothic chiller about desire and temptation belongs on the same shelf as the folk horror revival.
Roost by Hope Madden: A Folk Horror Built on Quiet Dread
Hope Madden’s Roost is a literary folk horror novella that follows twin sisters Joy and Hope across four Easter birthdays in a slowly dying Ohio town. With Catholic dread, small-town American gothic atmosphere, and a winged shadow that keeps coming home, this 2026 Lacandon Jungle Press reissue proves Madden’s gift for restraint. Here is why this coming-of-age horror sits with you long after the final page.
Tiffany Royster: Inside Echoes of the Forgotten, a Folk Horror Series
Horror author Tiffany Royster launched Echoes of the Forgotten on 12 June 2026, a folk horror series built on horror folklore and twelve standalone stories. In our interview she explains how the Broken Spine collective came together in twenty-four hours, why every author shares an equal voice, and what her own story Warden Tree adds to this multi-author horror series. She also hints at what the family plans to release next.
Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist Review: Folk Horror That Gets Under Your Skin
Rhiannon Grist’s debut novel Home Sick (Solaris, 2026) is a slow-burn psychological horror rooted in Scottish folklore and the particular dread of the domestic uncanny. Following Tamsin as her Scottish countryside fresh start becomes something far less clean, Grist builds claustrophobic menace from shared walls, unreliable narration, and a folkloric framework that deepens rather than resolves the horror. Read the full Ginger Nuts of Horror review of this essential 2026 folk horror debut.
Dan Coxon’s Come Sing for the Harrowing (2026): Folk Horror Reimagined
Dan Coxon’s Come Sing for the Harrowing, reissued by CLASH Books in April 2026, is eighteen stories of folk horror transported into the texture of contemporary British life. The uncanny shows up in a Cheddar Gorge cave system, a crumbling urban estate, a Brixton supermarket, a medieval tourist attraction that is just a little too authentic. Coxon, a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and twice British Fantasy Award-winning author, brings formal invention and restrained literary prose to a subgenre he clearly loves enough to pick a fight with. The result is the most interesting folk horror collection of 2026. Full review inside.
Kentucky Dragon by Michael Park: A Folk Horror Review
Kentucky Dragon by Michael Park is folk horror at its sharpest. A demonic debt, a Nazi inheritance, and a coal fire burning for three centuries converge in this intelligent, violent novel about intergenerational trauma and the moment the bill comes due. The chicken man will haunt your imagination long after the final page.
The Forbidden Lands Review: Mattia De Pascali’s Italian Folk Horror
Mattia De Pascali’s The Forbidden Lands is a handmade Italian folk horror fable that understands folklore is not quaint decoration but a system people live and die by. Shot in the Salento and channelling Lucio Fulci’s moral fury, this dark fantasy follows three women who refuse their assigned roles. Now streaming on Prime Video after a festival run spanning three continents.
Georgia Summers’ Trollheim: Nordic Folk Horror Done Right
Georgia Summers’ Trollheim: Tale of Sýstir announces itself in its opening pages as something different from the usual Nordic-flavoured fantasy. This is folk horror rooted in genuine Huldra mythology, the figure from Scandinavian folklore whose name derives from the Old Norse huldr, meaning “covered” or “secret.” When Sýstir’s mother is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, Summers is not using the witch trial as backdrop decoration. She is placing her story inside a specific, historical horror that resonates because it never entirely stopped being present. Sýstir, half-human and half-Huldra, escapes into the Dark Forest known as Trollheim, taken in by the rogue troll Agagkantor and accompanied by a wildcat companion named Fulgir, building a found family from the materials of loss and displacement.
Heresy Review: Dutch Folk Horror That Chooses the Bear
Didier Konings’ Dutch folk horror debut pits medieval religious patriarchy against the dark power of Witte Wieven—and the bear looks surprisingly friendly.
We Are For The Dark Descend Into Evil- Cover Reveal- Gretchen McNeil’s New Folk Horror
WE ARE FOR THE DARK: PUB DATE – 9/01/2026ISBN: 9780756400248⬥ Hardcover ⬥ What starts as a missing person investigation morphs into something much darker when an FBI-agent-turned-Catholic-priest and a junior constable arrive on a remote Newfoundland island. Because something evil lurks beneath the island—something ancient, eternal, hungry—and neither it nor … We Are For The Dark Descend Into Evil- Cover Reveal- Gretchen McNeil’s New Folk HorrorRead more
The Last Sacrifice Review: The Unsolved Murder That Haunted British Folk Horror
True crime, pagan revival, and cinema collide in this jaw-dropping documentary. The Last Sacrifice is sometimes clunky in its true crime format. It’s trying too hard to be scary. The approach doesn’t always suit the material, because the wild cinematic crossover with nonfiction is exponentially more interesting, and no crime was … The Last Sacrifice Review: The Unsolved Murder That Haunted British Folk HorrorRead more