Dean Cade’s Lost Boys, book two of the Summer 1973 trilogy from Slashic Horror Press, rebuilds the Houston Mass Murders from the inside out, following a closeted gas-station teenager through the summer the Candy Man came for the Heights. Our five-star review of a queer horror and true-crime hybrid that remembers the boys history reduced to a body count.
Jim McLeod
Please Rewind: Why 1994 Was Perfect for a Cursed Movie
Hailey Piper’s This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want begins with an obscure cinema screening in November 1994. We rewind to VHS culture, pre-Google research and the glorious inconvenience that made the decade perfect for a cursed movie.
The Need by Megan Mostyn-Brown Review: Family Hunger Has Teeth
Megan Mostyn-Brown turns a genetic hunger for human flesh into a viciously funny family horror about inheritance, class and the stories bloodlines tell about themselves. The Need is fast, tender and sharp enough to make its outrageous premise hurt.
Mazywood by Tananarive Due: The Wish That Grew Teeth
Tananarive Due’s Mazywood turns a child’s wish in 1926 Old Hollywood into a monster that waits fifty years for the family to come home. This creature feature and historical saga is her first novel since the multi-award-winning The Reformatory, and it confirms Gracetown as one of horror’s great haunted maps. A big, ambitious, occasionally overstuffed four-star return.
Hexy Beast by Avery Flynn: A Witch, a Werewolf and Spicy Rom-Com
Avery Flynn’s Hexy Beast throws a chaos witch and a grumpy werewolf alpha into a fated-mates bind, and the banter and spice deliver. This paranormal rom-com is the strongest Sherwood Witches book so far, held back only by a middle that loses its way in the woods.
Crone by Keith Rosson: Folk Horror Noir That Bites Back
In Crone, Keith Rosson binds a Pacific Northwest crime noir to a folk horror ghost story, following a grieving ex-detective through a corrupt town toward a witch who has been keeping his missing daughter for thirteen years. It is body-horror addiction, biker-gang rot, and generational violence, held together by prose of frightening control
American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams: Historical Horror of 1919 and the NAACP Spy Who Passed for White
Kelly McWilliams makes her adult debut with a historical horror novel about a white-passing NAACP spy investigating lynchings during the Red Summer of 1919. Our five-star review looks at how American Nightmare refuses catharsis, and why that refusal makes it the strongest Black horror fiction of the year. Out from Crown on 15 September 2026.
A Date with Death by Kelly Creagh: A Reaper Worth the Risk
Kelly Creagh’s A Date with Death is the rare paranormal romance that gives death a day job and a line manager. This grim reaper romance pairs a skeleton on the clock with a children’s librarian for a cosy-horror, grumpy-sunshine slow burn about found family and what it means to actually live.
Jeff Strand’s Fun Times at the Bloodbath: Horror Comedy Review
Jeff Strand’s Fun Times at the Bloodbath is horror comedy with teeth, a video game horror novel about a playtest no one can quit. The Bram Stoker Award winning author weaponises the attention economy and folds extreme horror into his sharpest comic engine yet. Here is why it gets under your skin.
Daggermouth by H.M. Wolfe: Dark Dystopian Romance With Teeth
H.M. Wolfe’s Daggermouth is being sold as dark dystopian romance, but it reads like social horror with the safety off. In New Found Haven, love outside your ring is a death sentence, feminine rage is a survival skill, and a forced marriage becomes a cage. Here is why this enemies-to-lovers opener to The Heart duology belongs on any dark fiction shelf.

