Jonathan Janz turns a small-town urban legend into a slow-burn gothic nightmare about grief, guilt and the girl everyone was too scared to actually see.
BOOK REVIEWS
Lost In Found Footage by Joey Powell, Turns A Horror Fan Into The Final Girl
Joey Powell’s Lost in Found Footage traps a horror vlogger inside the cursed film he sneaked a camcorder into. Abby Wolf reviews a metafictional horror novel that asks whether knowing every found footage trope actually keeps you alive in Hope Hollow. Out from Mad Axe Media on 11 August 2026.
Hand-Me-Downs by Neil Williamson: The Horror You Inherit
Neil Williamson turns the family bequest into the scariest thing you own. Some objects come with … Hand-Me-Downs by Neil Williamson: The Horror You InheritRead more
The House on Blood Street by Josh Hanson: A Giallo Descent
Josh Hanson’s The House on Blood Street is literary haunted house horror with a giallo heart, a story about obsession and grief that makes the house feel like yours before it takes everything away. Here is my full review of the Black Crow Books release, out 29 July 2026.
The Séance Garden Review: Juliet Blackwell’s Haunting New Novel
Juliet Blackwell’s The Séance Garden is a paranormal mystery that builds its horror through accumulated unease rather than cheap shocks. Set in Monterey and centred on a skeptical historian of the occult, this Gothic-tinged supernatural suspense novel asks what happens when the past refuses to stay buried.
Splasher by Billie Host: A Chlorine-Soaked Supernatural Slasher
My review of Splasher by Billie Host, the 2006-set supernatural slasher where a haunted university pool picks off a swim team one accident at a time. Queer horror, Y2K nostalgia and a genuine ghost story grief engine make this a slasher novel that remembers to feel.
In These Gilded Ghostly Hearts by Gwendolyn Kiste: Gatsby’s Ghosts Won’t Let Go
Bram Stoker winner Gwendolyn Kiste delivers a haunting queer horror retelling of The Great Gatsby in In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, following Daisy Buchanan’s daughter as she confronts her mother’s ghost and the still-grasping fingers of Jay Gatsby. This sapphic Gothic novella explores grief, legacy, and the hunger of a house that feeds on unfulfilled love.
Humanity in the Face of Horror: The Undiscovered Country by Teel James Glenn
The Undiscovered Country delivers horror noir thrills as Adam Paradise, Frankenstein’s creature turned PI, battles Ku Klux Klan necromancy in 1930s New Orleans. Teel James Glenn crafts a supernatural thriller that examines humanity’s capacity for organised hatred while celebrating compassion as the ultimate act of heroism.
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.
Old Gods by AV Wilkes: A Cold, Queer Cosmic Horror Collection
AV Wilkes steps beyond the polar ice with Old Gods, a micro-collection of five reprinted cosmic and folk horror stories. From an 1881 whaling ship to a vampire-haunted seaside hotel, this is queer horror with real tenderness and a deep cold running through every page.
The Haunting of Old Splinter by Jack Mackay: A Wish Best Left Unmade
Jack Mackay follows his debut Gloam with The Haunting of Old Splinter, a middle grade horror that hands the old wishing claw legend to two comic-mad brothers on a Yorkshire moor. It is a Monkey’s Paw retelling with real teeth, and one of the finest children’s horror books of 2026.
The Lamp in the Window by Tom Mead A Victorian Ghost Story
Every Christmas Eve, an old Victorian don lights a lamp and tells his students a ghost story. Decades later, one of them must face what those tales were really about. My review of Tom Mead’s The Lamp in the Window, an eerie Christmas ghost story novella from Absinthe Books.
Jockula by Gayle Ramage: Scottish Vampire Horror with Bite and Laughs
Jack Rushton is a thirty-nine-year-old vampire who just wants to be left alone with his Radio 4 comedies and his unrequited crush. Instead, he’s been blackmailed by a six-hundred-year-old vampire queen, hunted by a clueless anti-vampire collective, and his teenage sister is developing migraines that might be something far worse. Gayle Ramage’s Jockula is a darkly comic Scottish vampire horror that earns both halves of that descriptor.
The Turn by Rachel Feder: A Contemporary Gothic Review
Rachel Feder’s The Turn is a contemporary Gothic novella that reimagines the classic governess narrative for the pandemic era. This unsettling literary horror explores the monstrous bond between caregiver and child, the politics of care, and the terror of having your own memory rewritten. A precise, slow-creeping piece of vampire fiction that earns every scare.
Archival Anxiety in Documentary and Mockumentary Horror by Kristopher Woofter
Kristopher Woofter’s Archival Anxiety in Documentary and Mockumentary Horror offers a heady intellectual investigation into how films like Ghostwatch, Lake Mungo, and Unfriended capture our cosmic fears of the uncapturable. This academic study traces the genre’s evolution from gothic epistolary novels to screenlife horror, examining our fraught relationship with the cameras that document our lives—and our deaths.