Gretchen McNeil’s second adult novel drops a former-FBI priest and a stubborn constable on a boat-less Newfoundland island where the locals crave daily Mass. Our five-star review reads We Are For The Dark as religious folk horror that fuses detective fiction, Catholic dread, and a love story into one merciless question.
Tony Jones rounds up five new YA horror novels for August 2026. Cynthia Murphy’s Paint Me Like Your Dead Girls leads the pack as a top recommendation for schools, while Vincent Ralph’s Bleak Haven Quartet ends on a minor high. Melinda Salisbury and Jacqueline West deliver Folk Horror and small town chills.
Scott Hawkins ends an eleven year wait with Blacktail, a folk horror revenge novel told entirely by animals, in which a grieving half-breed wolf sets out to wake a sleeping Forest God and finish off the human race. Our review looks at the language of the Hunt, the squirrel death cult of Car, and why this eco-horror odyssey earns every one of its five stars.
E.F. Schraeder looks back at a 1980s Midwestern girlhood where the ordinary was the frightening part and the undead were a relief. The essay traces childhood fears through slasher films, the satanic panic and goth subculture, and explains exactly what job folk horror had to do. From the author of The Case for Cryptids.
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.
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.
Blood in the Bricks proves folk horror doesn’t need fields or standing stones to unsettle you. Neil Williamson’s anthology hauls the genre into the underground, the surgery ward and the skate park, with standout urban horror short stories from James Bennett, Dan Coxon and Ray Cluley. A bleak, brilliant collection that finds the uncanny in the everyday city.
