Daphne Press 2027: Bluebeard, Zombie Wives and Five More Dark Books

Daphne Press, the UK fantasy and science fiction house, has seven new books coming in the first weeks of the new year. This Daphne Press 2027 list runs from 19 January to 2 March and takes in a sapphic Bluebeard retelling from Claire Schultz, a zombie satire from Barbara Truelove, a winter ghost mystery from Susan Dennard, and new novels from Allison Saft, Elizabeth May, Megan Chee and Danielle Knight. Not all of it is horror. More of it is than you might expect from a fantasy press, and this is the house behind You’re No Better, which Ginger Nuts of Horror gave five stars. Here is what is coming, and the thread that ties it together.

Three of these books hand a woman a body that has already been spoken for: by a husband, by a bloodline, by a god. That is the fear running under the gowns and the gladiators. A list sold on swoons and swordfights keeps asking the oldest question in horror: who owns this body?

A man with a blue-black beard hands his new wife a ring of keys. A dead influencer takes her antifungal pills and smiles for the camera. An empress is told that her blood is all that keeps the gods out, and that she had better marry and make an heir before it runs out. Those are three of the seven books Daphne Press publishes between January and March 2027, and they share a nightmare.

The Daphne Press 2027 List Is a Horror List in Disguise

Daphne Press calls itself a fantasy and science fiction house. It began in 2021 as the book arm of the book box firm Illumicrate. Titan Books sells its books to the trade. Its first title was Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries, in January 2023. So nobody would file this list under horror first.

Read the seven press releases side by side, though, and the dark stuff is hard to miss. There is a house whose halls lead somewhere new each day. There is a man slowly turning into a tree. There are necromancers, monsters and a zombie horde at the gate.

The pattern goes deeper than the props. In three of these books a woman’s body is the prize. April Harker marries into a house that eats its wives. Patricia is a dead wife kept neat for her husband and her fans. Theodora Devaliant’s body is a real border between worlds, and the god-king wants her pregnant to keep it shut. Add a botanist whose body is being claimed by a forest. Add a young man who is a clone of his own father. Now the list reads like one long fight over who gets to own a body.

There is a fair objection here. Four of these books lead with romance, and two are not horror at all. A horror reader might call the lot romantasy in black lace. That is partly true. The press releases sell the swoon first. But in these books the romance is mostly the way out of the trap. The trap itself is pure horror.

Even Your Bones Would Do Takes Bluebeard Back to 1930s Boston

A week later, on 26 January, Susan Dennard comes back to the house that began with her. Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a ghostly mystery set on Blackbird Island in the winter of 1997. Wren Peters kissed Archer Sullivan in a basement during a blizzard. She would like that not to have happened. She would also like to forget her dream about a man who then turned up dead.

The island is thick with ghosts, if you believe in them, and Wren does not. Then her grandfather and Archer’s great aunt go missing. Her visions start to look like warnings. The pitch is Riverdale meets Widows Bay: old money, family feuds and a town with secrets. Dennard is best known for the Witchlands and the Luminaries books. But her first trilogy, Something Strange and Deadly, set zombies loose in Victorian Philadelphia. Horror is not a new room for her.

If you enjoyed But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo, then this book is for you. Pueyo’s novella also takes its cue from Bluebeard. It has a sapphic heart, a house full of dead brides and a key that should never be turned.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds Puts Ghosts on a Frozen Island

A week later, on 26 January, Susan Dennard comes back to the house that began with her. Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a ghostly mystery set on Blackbird Island in the winter of 1997. Wren Peters kissed Archer Sullivan in a basement during a blizzard. She would like that not to have happened. She would also like to forget her dream about a man who then turned up dead.

The island is thick with ghosts, if you believe in them, and Wren does not. Then her grandfather and Archer’s great aunt go missing. Her visions start to look like warnings. The pitch is Riverdale meets Widows Bay: old money, family feuds and a town with secrets. Dennard is best known for the Witchlands and the Luminaries books. But her first trilogy, Something Strange and Deadly, set zombies loose in Victorian Philadelphia. Horror is not a new room for her.

If you enjoyed The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould, then this book is for you. Gould’s debut has the same mix. There is a small town with secrets, missing teens, ghosts and a slow-burn romance between two people who should not get along.

The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives Bites the Trad Wife

The shortest book on the list looks like the angriest. Barbara Truelove’s The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives runs to 112 pages and lands on 16 February. Patricia is a reformed zombie. She is also a wholesome, trad wife influencer, and she owes her career to her husband, Ralph. She cooks, she shops, she sees her friends. Most days she can forget she is dead, as long as she takes her antifungal pills. That tells you what kind of dead she is.

Then a horde starts to close in on her fenced estate. Everyone else sees a threat. Patricia sees something beautiful, and a self she thought she had buried. Daphne Press pitches it as Annie Bot meets What Moves the Dead, for fans of C. J. Leede and Gretchen Felker-Martin. That last name tells you the satire will not be gentle.

It also joins a small run of zombie books that aim the horror at the home, not the end of the world. Our review of Maxim Volk’s Deadbeat found the same trick at work. Truelove is an Australian author and game designer. By her own account she writes mostly about werewolves. This sounds like a fine excuse to switch monsters.

If you enjoyed Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S. G. Browne, then this book is for you. Browne’s black comedy also follows a zombie trying to fit back into polite society. It uses the dead to poke fun at the living.

The Blade and the Last Sacrifice Makes a Body Into a Border

Also out on 16 February is the biggest book here, at 512 pages. Elizabeth May’s The Blade and the Last Sacrifice is a dark fantasy romance, and it does not pretend to be more. Still, its premise is grim. Theodora Devaliant is the last Anchor of a cursed royal line. Her body alone holds the veil between gods and humans. When demigods are found butchered in her streets, the god-king gives her a choice: marry, have an heir, or watch the realms burn.

To keep her alive long enough to obey, he sends Bastien as her guard. Bastien has hated her family for centuries, and he thinks she is behind the killings. Enemies, desire, a rising body count: you can see where the romance goes. What lingers is a woman whose worth is set by what her blood can hold back. May is Californian by birth and Scottish by choice, with a PhD from St Andrews (like there ever was a choice, especially when all the cool kids are linked to St Andrews; I bet my mum knows her, she knows everyone). She wrote To Cage a God, and the Seven Devils books with L.R. Lam.

If you enjoyed The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, then this book is for you. Broadbent’s dark romantasy also sets a woman against a deadly enemy in a world run by gods. Blood, betrayal and a slow-burn romance sit at its core.

Heartsgrove Turns a Botanist Into the Forest

Out the same day, Megan Chee’s The Archaeology of Falling Worlds is not horror, and it is worth saying so. It is a cyberpunk epic about class and migration in a dying multiverse, pitched as Cyberpunk 2077 meets Studio Ghibli. Starga is a neon city built by people who fell from the sky with no memory of their past lives. Its archaeologists study the junk that keeps falling.

Frey is a winged archaeologist from Lower Starga who sells stolen relics on the side. Alasar comes from the top of the city, and he is a clone of his rich father. They find a sweet but deadly shapeshifter in the wastes. Now they face a choice that could change the whole multiverse. Horror readers may know Chee from her short stories in Nightmare Magazine.

If you enjoyed Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, then this book is for you. Tesh’s novella is a queer folk tale about a man bound to an old wood. It has dryads, old magic and a love that pulls him back to the human world.

The Archaeology of Falling Worlds Is the Odd One Out

Out the same day, Megan Chee’s The Archaeology of Falling Worlds is not horror, and it is worth saying so. It is a cyberpunk epic about class and migration in a dying multiverse, pitched as Cyberpunk 2077 meets Studio Ghibli. Starga is a neon city built by people who fell from the sky with no memory of their past lives. Its archaeologists study the junk that keeps falling.

Frey is a winged archaeologist from Lower Starga who sells stolen relics on the side. Alasar comes from the top of the city, and he is a clone of his rich father. They find a sweet but deadly shapeshifter in the wastes. Now they face a choice that could change the whole multiverse. Horror readers may know Chee from her short stories in Nightmare Magazine.

If you enjoyed The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, then this book is for you. Johnson’s science fiction debut also uses a multiverse to dig into class. Its heroine comes from the poor side of a split city, and other versions of her wait in other worlds.

A Rather Violent Fate Sends the Necromancers Back Into the Dark

The list closes on 2 March with A Rather Violent Fate. It is Danielle Knight’s sequel to A Rather Vengeful Accord, which Daphne Press put out in November 2025. Hal and Alastair won in the arena. Then a betrayal shook Hal’s place at the college of St Penderghast’s, and Alastair has vanished. Now she has to hunt down her old partner. Her company is a cruel necromancer named Kiel and Alastair’s gladiator brother, Tieran.

Their trail leads into the darkest corners of Preyburn, past monsters and swordfights, towards something worse. Knight calls herself a fan of gothic fantasy, romance and horror. On this premise, horror gets the bigger share of the rent.

If you enjoyed Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, then this book is for you. Muir’s novel shares the same dark mix of necromancers, swordplay, sharp banter and rivals who cannot quite admit what they feel.

Who Owns the Body on the Daphne Press List

Seven books in seven weeks is a busy start to any year. What makes this run worth a horror reader’s time is not the odd zombie. It is how often these stories put a body on the table and ask who has the right to it. A husband. A bloodline. A god. A forest. A father.

Bluebeard’s wife opened the one door she was told to leave shut. Nearly every heroine on this list is holding a key, and the best horror here lives in what they find when they turn it.