My Favourite Horror Books of 2025: A Triumphant (and Difficult) Year-End List

My Favourite Horror Books of 2025: A Triumphant (and Difficult) Year-End List

Right. Making lists. An act of pure optimism, or maybe masochism, in a year that’s felt like being slowly digested by a cheerful, indifferent beast. I mean, honestly. Trying to pin down the best horror of 2025? I’ve stared at this final lineup more than I’ve stared at my own crumbling ceiling, and let me tell you, the ceiling was less stressful. Narrowing it down felt less like curating and more like performing surgery on myself. With a spoon.

And what a year to have to do it. My own personal subplot involved a spectacularly uncooperative body and a nervous breakdown in August that decided to overstay its welcome. A proper horror story in its own right, just without the elegant prose. For a while there, the idea of reading for joy felt like a joke in a language I’d forgotten. My batteries were so empty Scotty would be screaming,

“I can’t change the laws of physics! I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!”

But. But. You come back. My haggis is hopefully well and truly out of the fire. You have to. And what a thing to come back to. This year in horror books wasn’t just good; it was a sustained, collective scream of brilliance. The authors are not playing fair. They’re mainlining anxiety into the water supply. So, while my critical faculties were busy piecing themselves back together, these books were there, doing the heavy lifting. They were the joy. The absolute, unadulterated pleasure of being terrified by someone else’s imagination instead of your own brain’s.

“My wee Granny used to say, ye canna’ break a stick in a bundle. You’re part of something bigger now, lass. Don’t you give up on that, because we’ll sure as hell never give up on you. That is what being part of a crew is all about.” (Sorry, couldn’t resist another Scotty quote. In truth, my wee Granny would never say anything that comforting, she was a nasty, cruel woman)

So, here we are. I, Jim McLeod, am back from the war with myself, with a list that caused genuine physical pain to finalise. A list of books that made me forget my own medical troubles, that pulled me through the fog with sheer, bloody-minded talent. My favourite horror books of the year. Don’t @ me. Actually, do. I’ve missed it.

Let’s start with a city that’s always felt like a predator. London.

London Weird by A.V. Wilkes

London’s cheer has a thin veneer. That’s the thought that sticks. Ally Wilkes strips it right off in London Weird, revealing the ancient, hungry thing underneath. It’s a concrete labyrinth now, pulsing with a kind of cosmic dread that gets under your fingernails. Honestly, it’s genius. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the place, vibrant, sure, but oppressive after a couple of days. A constant low-level threat. This book doesn’t just feed that psychosis; it articulates it. Gorgeously.

Three stories, all linked by the entrapment women face. Moving from psychological prisons to literal, crumbling ones. The first, “You’re About To See This Colour Everywhere,” is a gut-punch. A modern riff on The Yellow Wallpaper, but Wilkes twists it into a tale of a toxic relationship between two women. An obsession with a specific shade of yellow. The madness blooms from within this time, a slow, psychological decay that feels terrifyingly real. No monsters, just the rot of resentment.

Then, “Who’s That Trip Trappin’?” Right. My genuine fear of the Tube. Wilkes mainlines that anxiety directly into your subconscious with this one. Set in the unnerving depths of Bank/Monument station. A frantic struggle for escape in the tunnels. The prose builds terror through sheer atmosphere, the threat of the unseen, making you desperate to gasp for air by the end. Claustrophobia as an art form.

“Billy Blue” though. An extraordinary haunted-house story where the house is a new-build flat and a troubled relationship. A pregnant woman, Alice, grappling with everything—antenatal depression, a controlling partner, her own fraying mind. The horror is the unbearable claustrophobia of her life. Trapped by everything. Wilkes handles it with such sympathy, leading to a conclusion that’s as moving as it is breathless.

This collection ensures the city’s walls close in. The Thames runs black with dread by the final page. Elvis Costello didn’t want to go to Chelsea; after this, I don’t think I ever want to go to London again. Wilkes has crafted something essential for anyone who senses the old hunger beneath the pavement. A masterpiece of modern unease.

Preaching to the Perverted by James Bennett

That mother in “Changeling,” making a demonic pact with a priest over her gay son? Chilling stuff. But the real horror, the bit that gnaws at you, isn’t the supernatural bargain. It’s the terrifyingly ordinary intolerance that fuels it. James Bennett has this knack, see, for finding the uncanny dread woven right into the fabric of lived queer experience. He doesn’t just slap a monster on top; he shows you how the monster was already there, hiding in a glance, a law, a whispered prayer.

The range here is something else. You go from that bleakness to the defiant, chaotic joy of a queer Pride parade in the heart of Lovecraft’s Arkham. It’s a brilliant middle finger to cosmic indifference. Then there’s “Husk,” where self-loathing literally manifests as a vengeful doppelgänger. A gut-punch of a story.

Bennett’s prose moves. It can be precise and literary one moment, dripping with visceral, raw energy the next. The tone shifts on a dime, from poignant to sharply funny, often in the same paragraph. That contrast, light against dark, it makes the shadows deeper. These aren’t just tales about being gay; they’re about love, fear, revenge, and the messy fight for self in a world that often wants you to be someone else. The horror works because it’s honest. It resonates because it’s true.

A powerful, authentic collection. It gets under your skin. Makes you look. Thirteen stories that thrash and pulse with life, in all its terrifying, glorious forms.

Futility by Nuzo Onoh

Let’s say you’ll never look at a bowl of hot pepper soup the same way again. Chia’s Abuja restaurant serves it up famous, but the secret ingredient? That’s where the horror starts, simmering right alongside the peppers. Nuzo Onoh throws two spectacularly bitter women together: Chia, with her beauty and culinary fame, and Claire, a British diplomat stewing in jealousy over her younger boyfriend. Their shared language is betrayal. And then a trickster spirit named Efu slinks in, offering a deal for revenge. Of course, they take it. What could go wrong?

Everything, naturally.

Onoh crafts this murderous, body-swapping romp with such a sharp, darkly comic wit that you’ll cackle even as your gut twists. The book’s title, Futility, isn’t subtle; it pounds you over the head with the empty pointlessness of chasing beauty, wealth, that whole superficial lot. Here are these women, granted monstrous power, and they’re still miserably unhappy. Their rage is volcanic, utterly compelling, even when their actions are despicable. You won’t sympathise, not really, but you get it. The path that leads someone there.

The genius here is the cultural immersion. The supernatural isn’t just a cool plot device; it’s a gateway into African folklore, a specific worldview that makes the horror feel fresh and deeply rooted. It’s a story crackling with unique energy.

Really, it’s a monstrously fun read. Bitingly funny in that way that makes you gasp-laugh. A potent mix of bloody vengeance and sly satire that leaves a lasting aftertaste. Just maybe don’t read it while you’re eating. Especially soup.

Wyrdwood by Curtis Jobling

Okay, let’s get this straight. You’re telling me the guy who designed Bob the Builder also writes this stuff? It’s a thought that sticks with you, a weird little hook, while you’re reading Curtis Jobling’s Wyrdwood. This isn’t a cheerful construction site. It’s the damp, creeping chill of Merryweather-by-the-Sea, an isolated town where the ancient Wyrdwood isn’t just scenery, it’s a character, patient and breathing.

The story grabs you with a classic, unsettling set-up. Kiki Harper comes home for the holidays, already haunted by a past tragedy, only to find a stranger named Fay has moved in. Wearing her late mother’s clothes, cooking in her kitchen. And the worst part? Her family adores this woman. It’s that visceral, personal invasion that gets under your skin faster than any phantom. Speaking of which, the local kids are whispering about the “Twig Man” at the forest’s edge, but honestly, that folktale feels almost quaint compared to the slow, domestic bewitchment happening in Kiki’s own house.

Jobling’s background in animation and family storytelling absolutely shows, but in the best way. There’s a visual, cinematic clarity to it all, you can see the snowy streets, the gloomy forest, the crumbling lighthouse. And the pacing? It doesn’t rush. It simmers. He takes his time weaving this tapestry of townsfolk, from the gruff gamekeeper with secrets to the elderly teacher who remembers the last time the woods stirred. You get a real sense of a whole community, with all its grudges and loyalties, sitting in the shadow of something old and angry.

It builds this brilliant, claustrophobic tension. The festive Christmas lights feel like a desperate, frail glow against the gathering dark. You’re just waiting, page by page, for the past to tear through the present. And when it does, the payoff is grand, terrible, and weirdly satisfying. It’s the perfect kind of eerie for an autumn night—a folk horror that feels both fresh and dug up from something very old. Makes you look at the woods at the end of your own street a bit differently.

Herculine by Grace Byron

Funny how a place promising safety can curdle into your worst nightmare. That’s the gut-punch of Grace Byron’s Herculine. You follow this narrator, a trans woman just scraping by in New York with a shitty retail job and a vial of holy oil in her purse, a detail that gets me every time. She’s haunted, literally debating sleep paralysis demons nightly. A real hot mess, but the kind whose sharp, self-deprecating voice you immediately trust. It’s that voice that pulls you into her desperate flight from a new, ancient evil.

She runs to an all-trans girl commune in Indiana, this sanctuary named Herculine. At first, it’s all shared meals and brittle hope. You want it to work for her so badly. But the dread. Oh, it builds in the quiet moments. Girls fall silent when she walks in. The library’s full of weird cryptograms. Her ex-girlfriend Ash, who runs the place, feels less like a saviour and more like a cult leader. The idyllic refuge reveals its rotten core through disembowelled pigs and disturbing rituals. Her demons didn’t stay in New York; they were waiting for her.

Byron blurs the lines so masterfully. Is the horror in the psychosexual rituals of the commune, or is it in the echoing trauma of conversion therapy? The literal and figurative demons are one and the same here. The book becomes this raw, unflinching metaphor for the perilous search for belonging. What do you sacrifice for community? Can a space built on shared pain become its own kind of trap?

The prose mirrors this unraveling, pivoting from dark humour about communal breakfast horrors to visceral terror. It’s a fever dream. The climax doesn’t offer cozy answers, just a bittersweet, hard-won realization about solidarity and self. Herculine isn’t a comfortable read. It’s terrifying, thoughtful, and feels desperately important. Horror holds up a mirror, and Byron’s reflects the brutal, courageous work of building a self in a world hell-bent on breaking it. A stunning, provocative debut.

Gloam by Jack Mackay

Let’s get this out of the way first: this book is dark. For a story aimed at kids, Jack Mackay’s Gloam doesn’t pull a single punch. It arrives like a cold mist, this tale, seeping into the cracks of a family already shattered by grief. You get the creepy, sentient house on a gloomy island, sure. The obligatory cryptic cat. But what sticks with you, what really gets under your skin, is the grief. It’s the real monster here.

Thirteen-year-old Gwen’s carrying the world. Her mom’s gone, and she’s left holding the pieces for her younger siblings while her stepdad, Henry, just kind of… flounders. Then enters Esme Laverne. Now there’s a villain. Blonde, beautiful, the “perfect” babysitter. She’s the kind of horror that works because it’s so insidious, the psychological warfare, the gaslighting, before the teeth even come out. She steals the show, a masterclass in masking monstrosity with a smile.

Yeah, you’ll spot the influences. A tip of the hat to Coraline, a nod to the family dynamics of IT. But Mackay’s doing his own thing. This isn’t just about spooky set pieces. The kids have to face literal nightmares, tailored to their deepest fears, claustrophobic burial, drowning visions. Harrowing stuff. But it’s the metaphor that guts you. The house’s rot? It’s their unprocessed sorrow. The only way to fix it is to feel it. That’s the brave part.

Which brings me to the heart of it. This is, strangely, a life-affirming book. Mackay proves horror can do that. It’s about kinship as armour. Gwen’s journey isn’t about becoming fearless; it’s about learning that facing the awful, tender truth is the real strength. The siblings’ solidarity, that moment when the adults finally listen—that’s the catharsis.

A word of warning: the “middle-grade” label might be a tad misleading. This is intense. It’s Goosebumps with the volume cranked to eleven and a heavy dose of raw, human pain. But it’s brilliant. Unflinching yet tender. Read it with the lights on, obviously. And maybe hug your family after.

A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper

Ever had a book make you blush, then keep you up at night? That’s this one.

Let’s cut to the chase: Hailey Piper’s A Game in Yellow is a trip. It’s that rare thing, a horror novel that gets under your skin not just with monsters, but with the far scarier stuff: desire, obsession, the whole messy business of being human. I’m talking a full-on atmospheric gut-punch that lingers like the last notes of a disturbing song.

The setup is genius. Carmen and Blanca, a couple trying to spice things up, stumble upon fragments of a cursed play, that old classic, The King in Yellow. But here’s Piper’s twist: the text is a drug. Small doses, pure euphoria. Too much? Welcome to madness. The metaphor isn’t subtle, and thank god for that. It’s a direct line into addiction, the kind that’s about power and escape, not substances. Piper brilliantly reimagines Chambers’ source material, not as a relic, but as a living, breathing psychological toxin.

And the characters, they’re flawed, beautifully so. Carmen, with her dwindling spark and deep-seated insecurities, drives their descent even as Blanca plays the domme. It’s a power dynamic turned inside out, a sharp look at who’s really in control in a relationship. Their world starts to dissolve, the mundane bleeding into the grotesque. One minute it’s a dead-end job, the next you’re at a masquerade ball with decaying revellers. It’s got that Lynchian unease, where the horror isn’t in the jump scare, but in the quiet, wrong feeling saturating everything.

The cosmic horror payoff is phenomenal. Carcosa isn’t just a place; it’s a state of being, a collapse of reality where body horror and existential dread become one and the same. The climax? It merges it all, the psychological terror, the bodily revulsion, the cosmic scale—into something grotesquely poignant.

Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. It’s unflinching in its fusion of eroticism and dread. But if you’re up for a challenge, for a story that treats horror as the deeply personal, psychological labyrinth it can be, this is essential reading. Piper doesn’t just tell a scary story. She makes you live in one.

Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang

Let’s cut right to it: this book gets under your skin. Not in a jump-scare way, but in that slow, creeping horror that starts in your gut when you recognise something true, and ugly, in the mirror.

Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception is a brutal, beautiful gut-punch. It follows Enka, an artist burning with envy for her brilliant friend Mathilde. So she does the unthinkable. Marries into a tech billionaire family, gets access to their experimental “empathy” tech, and starts… borrowing Mathilde’s mind. To understand her genius, to feel her pain. A Faustian bargain for the Instagram age, honestly. The real horror here isn’t a monster; it’s the logical endpoint of our own world. Where trauma gets monetised, art is content, and connection is just another app you can buy.

Huang’s writing? Dazzling. One sentence is lyrical, painting a canvas that “bled gold and screamed in vermilion.” The next is stark, clinical, mirroring the dehumanising tech it describes. The relationship between the two women is the masterpiece, achingly tender one moment, a parasitic nightmare the next. You understand Enka’s desperation even as you recoil from her choices. And Mathilde, whose pain the art world fetishises, is a tragic figure you won’t forget. “Your pain is a gift,” a gallery owner tells her. Chilling.

It’s that resonance that sticks with you. The empathy tech, the Silicon Valley galas where sharing trauma is a party trick, it feels less like sci-fi and more like Tuesday. Huang, a musician herself, orchestrates the whole thing with a vicious rhythm. Quiet, introspective moments, then bam, an explosive reveal. It’s a novel about art, identity, and the awful cost of authentic feeling in a world that sells it back to you.

A modern parable. A warning. A stunning, unsettling read that clings to your subconscious long after the last page. Huang isn’t just writing stories; she’s diagnosing our sickness.

Moonsick by Tom O’Donnell

Tom O’Donnell’s Moonsick is a howling success, a debut that takes the werewolf myth and injects it with a terrifyingly relevant dose of pandemic-era anxiety. This isn’t your grandfather’s gothic lycanthropy; it’s 28 Days Later with fur and fangs, a pulse-pounding YA horror that claws at the divisions in our own society.

The story follows Heidi Mills, a privileged high school senior whose life is shattered by a home invasion that leaves her infected with the brutal “lupino virus.” O’Donnell masterfully frames the outbreak with chilling bureaucratic familiarity, lockdowns, containment task forces (the dreaded “Dogcatchers”), and a stark examination of who gets to be safe. Heidi’s transformation is a raw, visceral journey, burning away the superficial expectations of her old world. The messy, compelling heart of the novel is her desperate alliance with Cam, one of the boys who robbed her, a bond forged in survivalist necessity, not contrived romance.

The narrative gains crucial depth through rookie Dogcatcher Erik, complicating the easy hunter-versus-prey dynamic. And then there’s Rhea, a werewolf who embraces the change as revolution, forcing Heidi and the reader to ask where the real monster lies. With its cinematic energy, grounded body horror, and sharp social commentary, Moonsick is a formidable, emotionally charged debut. It’s a story with its fangs bared, snarling at complacency, and it leaves the door wide open for a thrilling, more complex battlefield to come. A tale with serious bite.

Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce

Eden Royce’s Psychopomp & Circumstance is a masterful Southern Gothic that lingers like a haunting memory. More a quietly eerie exploration of grief and self-discovery than a traditional horror, it’s set in a vividly rendered, magical version of the Reconstruction-era South in New Charleston.

The story follows Phee St. Margaret, a young woman suffocating under her mother’s oppressive expectations. When her estranged Aunt Cleo dies, Phee seizes a chance at freedom by volunteering to be the “pomp”, the psychopomp who plans the funeral and guides the spirit. Travelling alone to her aunt’s unsettling house in Horizon, she uncovers family secrets and, more importantly, her own latent strength.

The atmosphere is the star here. Royce builds a world steeped in authentic Gullah Geechee traditions, where magic, hippocampi-drawn carriages, and message-delivering imps feel mundanely real. The horror is subtle, a pervasive dread built on visions in reflective surfaces and the profound weight of a house holding memories. The novella’s focused, 176-page length demands your attention, immersing you in Phee’s meditative, transformative isolation.

Watching Phee shed her mother’s influence and step into her power is profoundly cathartic. This is a story about navigating grief as a bridge to the past and future, and finding freedom in the communities we choose. A beautifully written, character-driven debut for adults, it’s perfect for fans of atmospheric Gothic and culturally rich fantasy like C.L. Polk or Leslye Penelope. A haunting, elegant success.

Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten

In Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine, Kristina Ten contorts the familiar artifacts of youth—CD-ROM games, cootie catchers, summer camp legends, into a brilliant and unsettling speculative debut. This collection explores the deep horrors of memory, alienation, and assimilation, arguing that the games we play are never just games; they are survival rituals for navigating a hostile world.

The genius here is Ten’s focus on “the horrors of inhabiting a body others seek to control.” This is a concrete, political horror drawn from immigrant and first-generation experiences. In “The Dizzy Room,” a language-learning CD-ROM teaches a cosmic, otherworldly tongue, twisting the anxiety of assimilation into pure dread. “Last Letter First” is a stunning standout, following two women on an intergalactic bus journey to access outlawed bodily autonomy. Their fleeting friendship culminates in a powerful act of solidarity, highlighting the collection’s core theme: community as the ultimate antidote to control.

Ten’s talent shines in her bold experimentation with form. “ADJECTIVE” is written as a Mad Libs, using the playful template to painfully underscore the depressing commonality of workplace microaggressions. Stories like “The Curing,” where children create better-liked doppelgangers from dried glue, serve as haunting metaphors for the erasure of self.

This is a conceptually sharp, deeply felt collection that finds the dark undercurrents in nostalgia. For readers of Kelly Link or Carmen Maria Machado, Ten’s work is a vital, audacious new voice. It challenges you to reconsider the rituals of your past and the high-stakes games of the present.

King Sorrow by Joe Hill

Joe Hill’s King Sorrow is a monumental, genre-defying epic that resurrects the doorstop horror blockbuster. This nearly 900-page novel follows six college friends who, in a moment of desperation, perform a childish ritual to summon the legendary dragon assassin, King Sorrow. They succeed. The catastrophic catch? They must provide the cunning, philosophical beast with a human sacrifice every year, or he will claim one of them.

The true magic isn’t the dragon, but Hill’s masterful, decades-spanning portrait of the friends themselves. We live with them for over forty years, watching as this terrible bargain mortgages their lives, twists their morals, and strains their bonds. The narrative audaciously pivots among genres, from campus thriller to locked-room mystery to dark fairy tale , keeping its immense length fresh and relentless. At its core, the book is a profound exploration of the consequences of choice, the seduction of power, and the monsters, both mythical and human, we become to survive.

Finishing King Sorrow leaves you with a feeling of grateful exhaustion, like you’ve lived a whole other life. It’s a commanding, captivating experience that cements Hill as a titan of the genre.

Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

In Coffin Moon, Keith Rosson drags vampire mythology back to its monstrous roots, planting it firmly in the grim, sleet-soaked reality of 1975 Portland. This isn’t a tale of romantic immortals, but a raw story of trauma, grief, and the violent obsession that follows.

The story follows Duane Minor, a Vietnam veteran grappling with PTSD and alcoholism while trying to build a fragile new life with his wife, Heidi, and his traumatised thirteen-year-old niece, Julia. This hard-won stability is obliterated when Duane crosses paths with John Varley, a centuries-old vampire and a genuinely cruel predator. In retaliation, Varley murders Heidi, sending Duane and Julia on a bitter, cross-country quest for vengeance.

Rosson’s mastery lies in the gritty, emotional ground where supernatural horror meets profound human pain. The pursuit becomes a dark exploration of how loss curdles into a consuming fixation. The 1970s setting is a character in itself, all neon and grime, perfectly mirroring the internal desolation of its protagonists. As Duane and Julia track Varley, encountering strange allies and ancient threats, their mission transforms, forcing them to confront what remains of their humanity as they are fueled solely by rage.

Coffin Moon is a gripping, relentlessly paced descent. It confirms Rosson as a major voice in dark fiction, delivering horror with potent emotional truth behind every drop of blood.

The Cat Bride by Charlotte Tierney

Heatwave of ’95. Sticky dread that clings to your skin like the memory of a bad dream. That’s the world Charlotte Tierney drops you into, a crumbling zoo on the moors, a place where the fences are as busted as the family dynamics.

We follow Lowdy. Sixteen, sick, and shipped off to this decaying place to tend to a dying grandma. Rumours swirl about a beast, a tiger-lynx hybrid called a tynx, supposedly back from the dead and stalking the hills. The locals blame Lowdy’s family. And grandma? She whispers that the thing needs to be fed. Meanwhile, Lowdy’s having blackouts, waking up with dirt under her nails and no clue where she’s been. Makes you wonder what’s really prowling out there in the heather.

Tierney’s got this knack, you know? She twists the whole body horror thing into something sharper. It’s not just about a girl maybe turning into a cat. Nah. It’s about the feral instincts buried in all that messy teenage girlhood, the societal pressures, the gaslighting, the inherited trauma from the women before you. The decaying zoo isn’t just a setting; it’s the perfect, stinking metaphor for it all.

Gotta be honest, the read itself can be a bit of a slog in places. Choppy. A sentence structure that sometimes pulls you right out of the fog. Felt a bit like wading through moorland peat. But hear me out—stick with it. The atmosphere is so thick you could choke on it. That grim, gothic fug of the 90s is a character all its own. It gets its claws in you.

By the end, you’re left mulling it over. A provocative, snarling little debut that’s less about simple scares and more about the monsters we’re told to keep caged inside. It lingers. Like cat scratch fever in your subconscious.

Secret Lives of the Dead by Tim Lebbon

You can feel the mud, the cold, the sheer exhaustion of it. This book moves. A single, rain-lashed day in some forgotten UK village, and Tim Lebbon just sets the pace at a dead sprint and never lets up. It’s a chase, pure and simple. Three kids, Jodi, BB, Matt, break into a rotting manor. A bad idea, obviously. But one of them, Jodi, she’s got skin in the game, a secret that turns a stupid dare into a blood feud.

Then there’s Lem. Now he is a piece of work. A relic-hunter with a curse on his family and violence in his bones. He’s not some mustache-twirling ghoul; Lebbon gives him history, trauma, a why. You almost get it. Almost. His pursuit is mechanical, relentless. Makes the whole thing read like a folk horror thriller drafted by Cormac McCarthy after one too many coffees. All kinetic energy and grim philosophy.

And here’s the brilliant, frustrating rub: is any of the curse even real? The witchy relics, the bad luck, maybe it’s all just a story people tell. A self-fulfilling prophecy of trauma and obsession. Lebbon plays it so close to the vest. The supernatural stuff simmers under the surface, bubbling up in flashes of body horror later on, but the real dread is human. It’s in Jodi’s selfish, grieving mission and Lem’s tragic, monstrous logic.

The folk horror tag might sell it, but this is a hybrid beast. It’s a crime thriller in a horror coat, dripping with atmosphere and teenage angst. The Ritual by Adam Nevill meets No Country for Old Men, maybe. BB and Matt? Honestly, they’re kinda just along for the ride, casualties of Jodi’s myopia. But that’s the point. This isn’t about a happy gang of mates. It’s about desperate people running through a storm, convinced a story is worth killing for. A masterclass in pacing and pitiless character. Utterly gripping.

Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light by Henry Corrigan

Guilt. That’s the real monster here, the thing that gnaws at you long after the lights go out. Reading Henry Corrigan’s Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light, you don’t just get a haunted house story; you get a mirror held up to every quiet, panicky fear of failing the people you love. Corrigan’s writing comes from a real place—a confession, really. He talks about his own childhood, how the simple terror of a Goosebumps book got replaced by this heavier, adult dread of letting everyone down. That feeling’s the engine of this whole thing.

And he pours it straight into his main man, Eric Tillman. Eric’s an artist, finally catching a break, desperate to give his family a perfect life away from poverty. So when his husband finds this strange, beautiful old house upstate, it seems like the answer to a prayer. But the house… Corrigan paints it as this neglected, manipulative old woman. The genius bit? The house doesn’t need to concoct some elaborate trap. It just has to… wait. Because Eric’s own guilt and that bone-deep fear of disappointment are gonna do all the work for it.

The horror here isn’t about jump scares. It’s the slow, chilling realisation that the things we’re most scared of as kids—they never leave. They just change shape. They grow up with us. Corrigan’s prose gets under your skin because it’s so emotionally raw, you can feel the author working through his own stuff on the page. It’s a story about how our best intentions, our love, can get twisted into the very thing that ruins us. If we’re not careful.

Even in the most brightly lit places, he writes. And that line sticks with you. A genuinely fresh voice in horror, making the internal panic feel as vast and terrifying as any ghost.

The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance

I’m a sucker for end-of-the-world stories. Always have been. But the apocalypse in Joanna Corrance’s The Hamlet? It’s a different beast entirely. No bombs, no zombies. Just a creeping, silent wrongness that swallows a rural Scottish community whole. Screens go blank, radios die, and you’re left in the dark with the characters, piecing together the dread.

Bold move, that. To trust the reader that much. Corrance takes your hand and leads you through this village of weird, wonderful, and deeply unsettling inhabitants. And what a cast she’s built. Told from the female perspective, the men here are… well, mostly awful. Nasty boyfriends, village sex pests. The decent ones? Don’t get your hopes up. Yet it never feels like an angry rant. Instead, it’s this powerful, raw celebration of womanhood. Of bruised and blemished women finding a terrifying strength. You sit there wondering where a story will go, and then she hits you with a narrative hook so brilliant you’ve just gotta keep reading.

Not a single story in this interconnected web disappoints. Down the Drain starts things off, a psychedelic, gut-punch of grief where you’ll think, what the hell is happening? The Dollhouse Gallery seeps with unknown dread, like the best ghost story never filmed. And Bedtime Stories… that’s the heart of it all. Polly, a kid with a miserable home life, dreams herself a princess and a space wizard. Don’t upset Polly. Seriously. The payoff is heartbreaking and powerful.

It’s genre-bending stuff. Horror, sci-fi, fairy tale, all mashed together with philosophical muscle. The prose is beautiful, the discomfort persistent. It’s the kind of book that lingers, making you look at the quiet corners of your own world a little differently. One of my all-time favourites, no question. An absolute masterpiece.

Why Ginger Nuts of Horror is a Top Destination for Horror Book Reviews

For dedicated fans searching for their next great scare, finding a trustworthy and passionate source for horror book reviews is essential. Look no further than Ginger Nuts of Horror, a cornerstone of the dark fiction community that has been delivering insightful and enthusiastic coverage for over 16 years.

Driven by a genuine love for the genre, the site offers far more than simple plot summaries. It provides a deep dive into the emotional and thematic heart of horror, exploring the feelings that make these stories so powerful and resonant.

What makes Ginger Nuts of Horror an indispensable resource for horror readers?

• In-Depth Horror Book Reviews: Find thoughtful, critical analyses that help you discover your next favourite read, from mainstream hits to hidden gems.
• Exclusive Author Interviews: Go behind the pages with fascinating interviews that explore the creative minds and processes behind the genre’s most renowned and emerging horror authors.
• A Commitment to the Genre: The site is renowned for highlighting innovative and boundary-pushing dark fiction, ensuring you stay on the pulse of what’s new and exciting.

Founded by Jim Mcleod, Ginger Nuts of Horror has grown from a passion project into an award-nominated, credible hub for a global community of readers. It’s a place built on a shared joy for horror, making it the perfect guide to help you navigate the vast and thrilling world of horror literature.

If you want to stay informed, inspired, and connected to the heartbeat of the genre, Ginger Nuts of Horror is your ultimate resource. Explore the site today and join a community that lives and breathes dark fiction.