Isabela Livino’s debut An Immaculate Deception traps a pregnant, devout woman in an isolated 1870s Brazilian estate where a family’s bargain with the devil has gone wrong. A Latin American Gothic of vanishing mirrors and disbelieved women, sitting alongside Mexican Gothic and Rosemary’s Baby, held back only by a slow middle third.
A. Rushby follows Slashed Beauties with All Her Beautiful Deaths, a dual-timeline gothic that turns Victorian death photography into a mystery about grief, art and ownership. It is atmospheric, queer and quietly hopeful, held back only by a present-day strand that crowds out its richer 1865 half.
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.
Warwick Gleeson’s TORMENT BECOMES THEM is an ambitious blend of horror, historical dark fantasy and time travel that asks whether changing history is ever wise. Our review explores the highs, the lows and the pain-based magic system.
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.
Rachel Harrison’s Kiss Slay Replay traps wedding guest Willa Sullivan in a time loop with a masked killer and her own regrets. Our review of 2026’s standout slasher explores how the Queen of Contemporary Horror turned anxiety itself into the monster.
Luna Gray reviews She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove, a queer supernatural revenge horror about a young woman murdered by her own manners and reborn inside a haunted porcelain doll. It is a story built on consent, class, and rage as a motor function, published by Ezeekat Press. Brutal, morally unsettled, and unwilling to heal anyone.
Sarah Maria Griffin turns a childhood game into cosmic horror in Strange Is the Light, set on Valentia Island. A five-star Irish gothic about friendship, betrayal, and a turn left unfinished for twenty years.
Vincent Ralph closes the Bleak Haven series with a matched pair that shares only a cursed town. Corpse Creek is a supernatural grief-horror; Fear Farm is a haunted-attraction slasher. We review both YA horror titles side by side, and both earn four stars for opposite reasons.
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
