Ginger Nuts of Horror has been reviewing horror books for 18 years. Here you will find reviews of new horror novels, novellas and short story collections, from small indie presses to the big imprints, across folk horror, gothic, cosmic, psychological horror and everything in between. Every review is free, independent and honest.
Luke Dumas follows A History of Fear and The Paleontologist with Nothing Tastes as Good, a body horror novel that drops Emmett Truesdale into the Obexity weight-loss trial and watches the miracle curdle into cannibal cravings. My review digs into how Dumas turns fatphobia, diet culture, and the Ozempic moment into the year’s most quietly devastating horror.
Tracy Fahey’s Queens of the Crone Age (PS Publishing, 2026) wakes the Cailleach, the Hag of Beara, and threads standalone tales into one long incantation. My review digs into why this feminist folk horror collection, steeped in Irish mythology and the power of older women, is some of the boldest work of her career.
Helen Grant’s Steal Me is a folk horror novella built on fairy-tale bones, set in a small Scottish town where a bookshop sells each customer the one thing they most want to hide. My review digs into the cursed bookshop, the Grimm folklore at its root, and why this Scottish Gothic chiller about desire and temptation belongs on the same shelf as the folk horror revival.
Leicole Lang’s debut horror novel While They Watch channels the spirit of classic isolation horror, building on sequestered distress to instil some of the most intense chills in recent literary memory. Taking time to establish character before ratcheting up the spookiness, this indie horror masterpiece delivers a slow-burn dread that explodes into pure, adrenaline-pumping fear, refusing to hand-feed answers and staying true to its uncompromising principles straight through to the end.
Carlyn Greenwald’s What Happened to Those Girls drops three teenagers into a witch-haunted ghost town and lets only the bodies come back. My review digs into why this queer YA horror thriller, all grief and betrayal and small-town folk horror, hands its murder investigation to the one girl everyone wants to blame.
Joshua Millican’s Dopefoot is cryptid horror that earns its monster the hard way, growing dread out of Northern California’s outlaw cannabis trade before the Bigfoot legend ever steps in. This Mad Axe Media release blends backwoods folk horror with gonzo extremity and lands as one of indie horror’s most distinctive reads of 2026.
Hope Madden’s Roost is a literary folk horror novella that follows twin sisters Joy and Hope across four Easter birthdays in a slowly dying Ohio town. With Catholic dread, small-town American gothic atmosphere, and a winged shadow that keeps coming home, this 2026 Lacandon Jungle Press reissue proves Madden’s gift for restraint. Here is why this coming-of-age horror sits with you long after the final page.
KC Grifant’s Women of the Weird West gathers 25 stories and poems that hand the gun to every woman the old westerns left out. This weird western horror anthology from Brigids Gate Press blends frontier folklore, women in horror, and speculative western short stories into one of the sharpest entries in the weird west revival.
