Occult decadence, Nazi shadows, and a Cockney detective who won’t look away — Phil Lecomber’s Piccadilly Noir reaches its full dark potential
Horror Book Reviews
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.
Our Top 5 Mark Morris Novels: Blood, Floods, Folk Legends, and Whatever’s Standing Outside
This week, Ginger Nuts of Horror is marking the release of his new novel, Bad Things Happen Here, with three consecutive days of Mark Morris. Today, we are running our Top Five Mark Morris novels, five books drawn from across his career that show what he does when he is operating at full power. On Wednesday, Jim McLeod sits down with Mark for an in-depth interview. On Thursday, we publish our full review of Bad Things Happen Here.
Deadbeat by Maxim Volk, A Choose Your Own Queer Adventure Horror at Its Nastiest
Maxim Volk’s Deadbeat — the first entry in Slashic Horror Press’s Extremities series — drops you dead on page one and hands you a choice. A choose-your-own-path narrative maze in relentless second person, it follows a gay househusband resurrected by a naked cult and left to navigate undead existence with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Funny, nasty, structurally inventive, and built around complicity as its core horror mechanism, Deadbeat is one of the most confident debut novels in queer horror this year. Jim McLeod reviews.
Pam Kowolski Is a Monster! by Sarah Langan Review: And I Thought I Held Grudges!
Sarah Langan’s Pam Kowolski Is a Monster! (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2025) is a 119-page psychological horror novella about failed journalist Janet Chow, who attempts to expose her high school nemesis — now “Madame Pamela,” America’s favourite doomsday psychic — and uncovers a version of their shared past she’s spent twenty years getting wrong. Langan builds horror from the inside out: bitter, funny, and structurally precise, this is one of the most accomplished novellas published in horror this year. Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist Review: Folk Horror That Gets Under Your Skin
Rhiannon Grist’s debut novel Home Sick (Solaris, 2026) is a slow-burn psychological horror rooted in Scottish folklore and the particular dread of the domestic uncanny. Following Tamsin as her Scottish countryside fresh start becomes something far less clean, Grist builds claustrophobic menace from shared walls, unreliable narration, and a folkloric framework that deepens rather than resolves the horror. Read the full Ginger Nuts of Horror review of this essential 2026 folk horror debut.
The Way It Haunted Him Review: Laura R. Samotin’s Dark Academia Horror Is the Real Thing
Laura R. Samotin’s The Way It Haunted Him (Titan Books, June 2026) is her adult horror debut — a claustrophobic queer dark academia novel set in a Jewish archive overrun with dybbuks, mazzekin, and the particular danger of a man who has mistaken punishment for love. Jim McLeod reviews for Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Headlights by CJ Leede Review: Horror at Its Most Devastating
CJ Leede’s Headlights is the most ambitious novel of her career: a supernatural FBI thriller set against the frozen Colorado wilderness that fuses folk horror, procedural crime, and cosmic dread into something that stays with you long after the last page. Special Agent Daniel Stansfield returns to Denver on his final day with the FBI, drawn back by a case he never solved and a signature that defies explanation — people waking on highway shoulders, wearing the skin of victims, each with a stranger’s hair knotted around their tongue. Leede uses horror to do what only horror can: hold grief, trauma, freedom, and the afterlife simultaneously, without flinching from any of them. This is a review of a novel that rearranges something in the reader. Read on.