Dan Coxon’s Come Sing for the Harrowing, reissued by CLASH Books in April 2026, is eighteen stories of folk horror transported into the texture of contemporary British life. The uncanny shows up in a Cheddar Gorge cave system, a crumbling urban estate, a Brixton supermarket, a medieval tourist attraction that is just a little too authentic. Coxon, a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and twice British Fantasy Award-winning author, brings formal invention and restrained literary prose to a subgenre he clearly loves enough to pick a fight with. The result is the most interesting folk horror collection of 2026. Full review inside.
Horror Book Reviews
Backstabbers by Eliza Jabore Review: The Slasher That Bites Back
Eliza Jabore’s debut novel Backstabbers sends three friends, Jade, Stef, and Zoe, into Washington State’s Bones Hollow Trail, the former hunting ground of a serial killer, with nothing but wilderness, each other, and a true crime podcast for company. What begins as a survivalist slasher quickly becomes something more precise: a dark, funny, and quietly devastating study of female friendship under impossible pressure. This is the slasher novel 2026 needed.
Murphy’s Lore by Dan Soule: A Science Fiction Horror Novella That Gets Under Your Skin
Dan Soule’s Murphy’s Lore arrives in 2026 as a standalone republication of a novella originally published in Crystal Lake’s A Graveyard of Stars anthology. It follows Murphy, a nineteen-year-old Black British field medic aboard a maintenance vessel at the edge of Algol space, as her crew retrieves a decades-old coffin from the void — and the alien artifact inside begins to unpick each crew member at the seams. Blue-collar sci-fi horror in the tradition of Alien and Event Horizon, but more interested in grief than gore, Murphy’s Lore is Soule’s most precise and emotionally demanding work to date.
Eat the Light by Andrew Najberg, Review, A Post-Apocalyptic Cosmic Horror Masterwork
Andrew Najberg’s Eat the Light fuses post-apocalyptic survival horror with cosmic dread in a novel that follows two young sisters through a world where light itself has become predatory. Brutal, tender, and built on a sibling bond that gives the darkness something worth devouring, this is literary horror operating at full capacity.
Kentucky Dragon by Michael Park: A Folk Horror Review
Kentucky Dragon by Michael Park is folk horror at its sharpest. A demonic debt, a Nazi inheritance, and a coal fire burning for three centuries converge in this intelligent, violent novel about intergenerational trauma and the moment the bill comes due. The chicken man will haunt your imagination long after the final page.
The Sourdough Compendium Review: A. G. Slatter’s Gothic Triumph
A. G. Slatter’s The Sourdough Compendium gathers three long-out-of-print mosaic collections into a single 657-page volume of gothic horror that reads like the Rosetta Stone for her entire Sourdough universe. Our review explores how these folk horror stories, built on fairy-tale logic and female defiance, reward every dark fantasy reader who discovers them.
These Familiar Walls Review: C.J. Dotson’s Suburban Horror Burns Super Bright
C.J. Dotson’s These Familiar Walls is a dual-timeline suburban horror novel that burns through the haunted house tradition and builds something sharper from the ashes. Following Amber Walker across 1998 and 2020, it is a psychological horror novel about the stories families tell to survive, the secrets buried in familiar walls, and the terrifying possibility that you deserve to be haunted. For fans of T. Kingfisher, Catriona Ward, and Cassandra Khaw.
Brides In the Dark by Jacob Steven Mohr Review: A Dark Fairy Tale of Harpies and Hidden Truths
Brides In the Dark Review: Jacob Steven Mohr’s horror novella blends Gothic dark fairy tale and harpy lore into a tense fable of hidden truths.
The Journey of Mastering Poker: A Strategic Tale
The Journey of Mastering Poker: A Strategic Tale Poker isn’t just luck. Sure, you might win a hand or two on pure chance, but the real masters are weaving strategic stories that’d make Sun Tzu jealous. I’ve watched countless players think they can waltz into a casino and dominate the … The Journey of Mastering Poker: A Strategic TaleRead more
The Temptation of Charlotte North Review: Camilla Bruce’s Dark Gothic Triumph
Camilla Bruce’s The Temptation of Charlotte North is a dark gothic fantasy that understands atmosphere is not decoration but a character with its own pulse. Set on a remote island in 1910, the novel follows Charlotte North, a rebellious young woman who discovers that a violent spirit released from an ancient tower might be the leverage she needs to escape a predetermined life. With three carefully woven points of view and prose that balances elegance with restraint, Bruce has written her most confident, unnerving novel yet.
YA Science Fiction Horror Books: Top Picks for Teens
YA science fiction horror sits at the crossroads of dread and discovery. These aren’t just scary stories for teenagers. They’re nightmares wearing spacesuits.
I’ll Watch Your Baby by Neena Viel: Is a Must-Read
Neena Viel’s second novel, I’ll Watch Your Baby, follows two timelines, Lottie Turner’s 1974 Chicago schemes and Bless’s 1994 robbery gone terrifyingly wrong, through a Southern Gothic haunted house that has earned every one of its ghosts. A socially sharp, historically grounded Black horror novel with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review, it is one of the most significant releases of 2026. This is our full review.
New Writings in Horror and Supernatural Vol III Review: Stephen Jones Revives a Classic
Stephen Jones doesn’t just edit a horror anthology; he curates a conversation between generations of dark fiction writers, and Volume III continues that vital tradition.
The Other by Annie Neugebauer Review: Doppelganger Horror Done Right
The fear isn’t the monster under the bed. It’s the face in the mirror that looks back a moment too long.
The Nest by Kenneth Oppel Review: When Wasps Promise Salvation
“A dark teenage family drama for children which bleeds into an unsettling dream world”