When a true-crime blogger insisted the killings in Harmed and Dangerous were real, Jasper Bark watched his own fiction bleed into fact. The truth was an alternate reality game engineered by Crystal Lake Publishing’s Naching T. Kassa — Killer Sleuth, fake QR codes, recorded readings and all. This is how a piece of viral book marketing fooled even a seasoned hoaxer.
horror fiction review
Women of the Weird West, edited by KC Grifant: The Frontier Reclaimed
KC Grifant’s Women of the Weird West gathers 25 stories and poems that hand the gun to every woman the old westerns left out. This weird western horror anthology from Brigids Gate Press blends frontier folklore, women in horror, and speculative western short stories into one of the sharpest entries in the weird west revival.
Tiffany Royster: Inside Echoes of the Forgotten, a Folk Horror Series
Horror author Tiffany Royster launched Echoes of the Forgotten on 12 June 2026, a folk horror series built on horror folklore and twelve standalone stories. In our interview she explains how the Broken Spine collective came together in twenty-four hours, why every author shares an equal voice, and what her own story Warden Tree adds to this multi-author horror series. She also hints at what the family plans to release next.
We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower: You Will Never Look at Anything the Same Way After This Novel
India-Rose Bower’s debut We Call Them Witches is a folk horror that braids eldritch creatures, pagan ritual and a sapphic romance through a post-apocalyptic Britain. Our review digs into how Bower builds dread, writes family, and lands right on the front edge of where horror is heading.
Bad Things Happen Here by Mark Morris: Horror That Never Left Room 55
Mark Morris’s Bad Things Happen Here is slow-burn British supernatural horror at its most character-driven and most unsettling. Five former university friends are pulled back together after twenty years when the past trauma they never actually dealt with starts bleeding into their children’s lives. Published by Flame Tree Press on 30 June 2026, this is ensemble horror fiction with the psychological precision and atmospheric dread that defines Morris at his best.
Slasher Summer by E. L. Chen: A Bloody Love Letter to ’80s Slashers
E. L. Chen’s Slasher Summer drops seven friends back at the cabin where their favourite 1980s slasher was filmed, then lets the masked killer arrive on schedule. My horror book review digs into the Final Girl twist, the meta-slasher structure, and why this throwback belongs beside books like The Final Girl Support Group.
The Pyramid Has Secrets: Inside the Luxor’s Dark and Haunted History
The Pyramid Has Secrets: Inside the Luxor’s Dark and Haunted History Las Vegas was built on the idea that anything can happen. Fortunes made and lost in hours. A city that invented itself from desert dust and neon. But amid the spectacle, one building has accumulated a reputation that no … The Pyramid Has Secrets: Inside the Luxor’s Dark and Haunted HistoryRead more
Mark Morris: Bad Things Happen Here and a Life in Horror
Mark Morris has been writing British horror fiction since 1989, and Bad Things Happen Here may be his most emotionally precise novel yet. In this wide-ranging interview, he talks about intergenerational fear, the Nordic folklore that shaped That Which Stands Outside, and what it actually takes to survive four decades in a genre that has buried far bigger names. Essential reading for anyone who takes UK horror seriously.
The Fantastical Horror of Frances White’s The Bone Door
In The Bone Door, Frances White crafts a trauma fantasy where a memory labyrinth becomes an emotional horror. Hop’s journey through locked doors is a devastating exploration of grief and healing. This isn’t just dark fantasy—it’s a compassionate look at bearing wounds that never fully close.
Vic Kerry Is Stuck in A Horror Franchise
Vic Kerry wakes up in I Know What You Did Last Summer—and he’s not scared. Between crushing on Jennifer Love Hewitt and exploiting Ben the Fisherman’s terrible wardrobe choices for a heat stroke victory, this horror interview template gets weird. Plus: why Velma needs Dr. House and Geordi La Forge.
Cover Reveal: Still Floating: Pennywise at 40 and Why He Won’t Die
Forty years after Stephen King published IT, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is still showing up: on HBO, in academic criticism, and now in Still Floating: 40 Years of Pennywise, edited by Bram Stoker Award-winner Tom Deady. The book brings together thirty contributors, including Stephen King expert Bev Vincent and co-author Richard Chizmar, to examine the cultural weight of a 1,138-page novel that never quite let go. This retrospective makes the case for why IT belongs in a different conversation than most horror fiction, and why that conversation is long overdue.
The Kids Are Alright: Horror Books for 10 Year Olds
Horror books for 10 year olds that pass the classroom test. Twenty middle grade picks from a librarian’s 100 Book Challenge, backed by real pupil reviews.
Deadbeat by Maxim Volk, A Choose Your Own Queer Adventure Horror at Its Nastiest
Maxim Volk’s Deadbeat — the first entry in Slashic Horror Press’s Extremities series — drops you dead on page one and hands you a choice. A choose-your-own-path narrative maze in relentless second person, it follows a gay househusband resurrected by a naked cult and left to navigate undead existence with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Funny, nasty, structurally inventive, and built around complicity as its core horror mechanism, Deadbeat is one of the most confident debut novels in queer horror this year. Jim McLeod reviews.
Pam Kowolski Is a Monster! by Sarah Langan Review: And I Thought I Held Grudges!
Sarah Langan’s Pam Kowolski Is a Monster! (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2025) is a 119-page psychological horror novella about failed journalist Janet Chow, who attempts to expose her high school nemesis — now “Madame Pamela,” America’s favourite doomsday psychic — and uncovers a version of their shared past she’s spent twenty years getting wrong. Langan builds horror from the inside out: bitter, funny, and structurally precise, this is one of the most accomplished novellas published in horror this year. Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist Review: Folk Horror That Gets Under Your Skin
Rhiannon Grist’s debut novel Home Sick (Solaris, 2026) is a slow-burn psychological horror rooted in Scottish folklore and the particular dread of the domestic uncanny. Following Tamsin as her Scottish countryside fresh start becomes something far less clean, Grist builds claustrophobic menace from shared walls, unreliable narration, and a folkloric framework that deepens rather than resolves the horror. Read the full Ginger Nuts of Horror review of this essential 2026 folk horror debut.