Horror features, essays and retrospectives from Ginger Nuts of Horror. We dig into genre history, pay tribute to the people who shaped horror, reveal new book covers and ask why certain stories still get under our skin.
Adrian Tchaikovsky has been writing cosmic horror and folk horror under a science fiction badge for years, and most horror readers missed it. His gothic horror novella Preaching to the Choir, out in August from Solaris, is the moment that excuse runs out. Here is why the Terrible Worlds: Transformations author belongs on your shelf.
Horror author headshots have quietly become their own genre, complete with a fixed set of clichés: the bare brick wall, the all-black wardrobe, the half-smile that hints at violence. This field guide roasts the lot, explains how Garth Marenghi turned the brooding-author pose into a punchline, then asks why the horror publishing boom has turned every author photo into a marketing asset. With a salute to Chuck Tingle for solving the problem with a pink bag.
Sam Neill has died aged 78. Most tributes will lead with Jurassic Park, but the horror world owes him a deeper debt. From Possession and Omen III to John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness and the cult favourite Event Horizon, Neill built one of the genre’s strangest and best CVs. Here is our farewell to horror’s quiet master.
Forget the shimmery monofins and the singing crab. Ava Morwood, author of Until We Drown, traces mermaid folklore through its strangest corners: Peak District drowning pools, Japanese ningyo, the Feejee Mermaid and a scholar who blamed the plague on rotting merfolk. Dark mermaid legends as you have never heard them.
“Gingerly” is supposed to mean cautious and frightened, but it has nothing to do with red hair and everything to do with bad faith. From Erik the Red and Elizabeth I to Shirley Manson and Ginger Wildheart, this is a celebration of the famous redheads who never once tiptoed, with one gloriously snarky paragraph about Mick Hucknall thrown in. Ginger Nuts of Horror goes to bat for its own kind.
C.N. Vair’s Fawn is one of 2026’s most talked-about folk horror debuts, built around Tess Wynne, an Appalachian witch who rescues a red-mouthed, full-toothed fawn with unnatural appetites, and must decide what she is willing to become to protect what is hers. If that book has already got its teeth into you, this reading list was made for you. We’ve put together ten books that share Fawn’s DNA — from Emilia Hart’s multi-century witch saga Weyward to Cassandra Khaw’s blood-soaked fairy tale The Salt Grows Heavy to Genevieve Gornichec’s Norse folk horror The Witch’s Heart — each with a full mini-review. This is the definitive reading list for fans of folk horror, powerful witches, and women who bite back.
“Liminal horror” has become a hipster buzzword, so here is what it actually means and where it actually lives: the back of the shop. From Skinamarink, The Exit 8 and Vivarium to Edinburgh’s Hunter’s Tryst and the council-house terror of Ghostwatch, this is the case that the Backrooms are just a British backshift, and that British working-class horror beats the American liminal void at its own game. The Americans get the empty void. We get the void plus a supervisor.
