Kelly McWilliams makes her adult debut with a historical horror novel about a white-passing NAACP spy investigating lynchings during the Red Summer of 1919. Our five-star review looks at how American Nightmare refuses catharsis, and why that refusal makes it the strongest Black horror fiction of the year. Out from Crown on 15 September 2026.
Kelly McWilliams talks to Ginger Nuts of Horror about American Nightmare, her Black horror novel built from Walter F. White’s real history as a NAACP spy during the Red Summer of 1919. She explains why the book, unlike her debut Mirror Girls, refuses any monster a reader could kill, and how the Atlanta Race Riot and racial passing shaped its uncanny, rule-less dread.
