Peace Mbengei’s We Run the Night turns a Kenyan boarding school into a sealed arena for folklore, grief and body horror. This five-star YA horror debut makes the night runners frightening, but the adults who refuse to listen are worse.
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.
Lost Boys by Dean Cade: Queer Horror Meets the Candy Man Murders
Dean Cade’s Lost Boys, book two of the Summer 1973 trilogy from Slashic Horror Press, rebuilds the Houston Mass Murders from the inside out, following a closeted gas-station teenager through the summer the Candy Man came for the Heights. Our five-star review of a queer horror and true-crime hybrid that remembers the boys history reduced to a body count.
You See It Too by AJ Malachite: A Queer Gamebook Horror Where No One Walks Out Whole
A.J. Malachite’s debut You See It Too turns the choose-your-own-adventure format into a body-horror trap, sending three queer students into a bayou preserve after a will-o’-the-wisp that turns out to have larvae. It is folk horror, eco-horror and Southern Gothic at once, with old money farming the swamp for generations. Four stars for a gamebook that refuses to let you save everyone.
An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino: A Gothic Debut That Traps You in the House
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.
All Her Beautiful Deaths by A. Rushby: A Gothic Built on Victorian Death Photography
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.
Mazywood by Tananarive Due: The Wish That Grew Teeth
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.
