Jacob Steven Mohr’s Samanthas sends a teenage essay writer after a missing swimmer and three new girls who share one name. This horror novella blends hard-boiled teen noir with sad, strange body horror, plus three bonus stories that widen its world. Read the full Samanthas review on Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is a Dorian Gray retelling for the deepfake age, and this Incarnate review finds it her sharpest novel yet. A lonely effects artist builds the perfect influencer, then accepts help from a stranger who wants something back. Fast, smart techno horror from Titan Books that earns all five stars.
My There Used to Be People Here review looks at Kennedy Cole’s debut, a sci-fi horror novel set in 1978 Mississippi. A Black detective and his temporary partner chase a strange death towards a crash that was not a plane. It is Southern noir horror with real heart, and one of the best debuts of the year.
Desirée de Fez’s debut novel follows a mother and two daughters who can’t stand to be apart, until Christmas Eve in a shopping centre splits them open. Our Don’t Leave Her Alone review explains why this Spanish body horror novel, translated by Lizzie Davis, deserves a place on every horror shelf this autumn. Motherhood body horror fans should clear a space on the shelf.
Peace Mbengei talks through her debut YA horror novel We Run the Night, where Luo night runners turn grief into body horror inside a Kenyan boarding school. She discusses the strangler fig at the story’s centre, the institutional cover up that follows, and why forgiveness, not revenge, sets her heroine free.
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.
