Something Sour in the Sweet Shop: Horror’s Long Affair With Candy Horror is meant to live … Something Sour in the Sweet Shop: Horror’s Long Affair With CandyRead more
BOOK REVIEWS
Lionhearts by Dan Howarth Review: Horror With an Axe to Grind
Dan Howarth follows Last Night of Freedom with Lionhearts, a political horror novel about grief curdling into hate somewhere Northern and thoroughly let down. Our Lionhearts book review looks at Henry Oswald, the staccato prose, and an ending that turns a depressed landscape florid, charged and brutal. Bring paracetamol.
Blacktail by Scott Hawkins Review: A Wolf, a Sleeping God and the End of Human Exceptionalism
Scott Hawkins ends an eleven year wait with Blacktail, a folk horror revenge novel told entirely by animals, in which a grieving half-breed wolf sets out to wake a sleeping Forest God and finish off the human race. Our review looks at the language of the Hunt, the squirrel death cult of Car, and why this eco-horror odyssey earns every one of its five stars.
Summer Coven Review: A Queer Cosy Mystery With a Corpse in It
Kat Hillis and Rosiee Thor return to Trident Falls in Summer Coven, the second Dead & Breakfast paranormal cozy mystery. Two married vampire innkeepers investigate a poisoned pet psychic, a coven of witches, and a missing person. A queer, funny, warm-hearted whodunit for anyone who wants their vampires kind.
WordPress Article Tags
Devil Inside by Clay McLeod Chapman: The Horrormance That Makes Love Look Like an Infestation
Clay McLeod Chapman’s Devil Inside is a horrormance in the fullest sense: a demonic possession horror novel that treats its love story with total seriousness and is all the more frightening for it. Jordan died for two and a half minutes. Lilith has never had a body of her own. Our five star review of one of the boldest horror romance books of 2026.
Where the Roaches Are by CC Adams: Horror Collection Review
CC Adams returns with Where the Roaches Are, a horror short story collection set in a hospital where the real damage is social rather than supernatural. Echoes of Nigel Kneale, Mark Morris and Roald Dahl run through a book built to disquiet rather than terrify. Read the stories in the order Adams gives you, because the order is doing work.
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-young: The Korean Lovecraft Retelling That Grieves
Kim Bo-young takes Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth and relocates it to a quarantined Korean fishing village in A Plagued Sea, her first horror novella in English. Translated by Sophie Bowman for Tor Nightfire, it turns cosmic horror into a pandemic elegy about grief, guilt and the people we cannot protect. Our five-star review explains why this hundred-page Korean Lovecraft retelling lingers.
The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen – A Masterclass in Artistic Horror
Kailee Pedersen’s The Minimalist is a gruelling, unflinching psychological horror novel about a composer’s descent into madness. Published by St. Martin’s Press, it follows Mia Voss as she returns to her mentor’s Santa Fe mansion to complete his unfinished masterpiece, only to find the manuscript exerting a disturbing hold over her. Drawing from Pedersen’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, this is body horror at its most intelligent—a meditation on artistic obsession, adoption trauma, and the sacrifices we make in pursuit of creative perfection.
The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty: A Hungrier Haunted House
Tor Nightfire’s August 2026 debut from Max Doty reinvents the haunted house novel with no ghost at all, only a property that eats the dead and unmakes the record of them. Our review digs into the complicity horror at its core, the class and money threaded underneath, and why this domestic horror lingers long after the last page.
Dreamland by Olivie Blake: A Hollywood Gothic That Bites Back
Olivie Blake’s Dreamland sends an aspiring actress into a cursed Hollywood dynasty during a Los Angeles summer of murders and Santa Ana winds. A formally daring literary horror novel that fuses the gothic estate with the machinery of modern celebrity, even if the back half loosens its grip.
Dark Tide 20: Urban Legends Review, Three Novellas Worth Reading
Dark Tide 20: Urban Legends brings together three horror novellas from Leigh Kenny, Dan Franklin, and Nick Roberts, published by Crystal Lake Publishing. Our review breaks down a haunted house, a mother’s dread, and a podcast summoning that all go badly wrong. Three flavours of fear, one frightening finish each.
The Residency by C.D. Major -A Gothic Suspense Review
C.D. Major’s The Residency is a gothic suspense novel that builds dread with patient, deliberate precision. Set on a remote Scottish island, it follows single mother Ginny as she accepts an artist’s residency that proves far more dangerous than she imagined. With its uncanny paintings, whispering walls, and a community that knows more than it says, this is slow-burn horror at its most effective.
Driven by Mason Coile: The Horror of The Self-Driving Car
Mason Coile’s Driven is a self-driving car horror novel that inverts every AI horror trope of the last three years: the machine does not wake up, the man goes to sleep. Andrew Pyper’s final book under the Coile name is a locked room story with wheels, a grief novel in disguise, and a very cold joke about the rental market.
Saint Delilah by Isabelle Spotts, A Ghost Story With Teeth.
Isabelle Spotts’s Saint Delilah is a ghost story that refuses to be gentle. This feminist supernatural suspense novel follows Delilah, a murdered nineteen-year-old who becomes a ghost and, with the help of a medium and a man who can see the dead, hunts her killer. Evil entities threaten to consume her soul. It is a revenge narrative, a thriller, and a meditation on grief and justice. The dead don’t forget. Neither will you. Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Party of a Lifetime by Henry Corrigan: A Queer Body Horror Novel That Puts the Real Monster in the Driveway
Henry Corrigan’s Party of a Lifetime strands four queer friends in Monotony, a 1950s hell town that reshapes itself around their nightmares and slowly reshapes them too. This is body horror written with a mechanic’s patience, with a narcissistic mother at the centre of it, and it is the best thing Corrigan has written.