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 fiction review
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.
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.
Womb of Shadows: Peter Neal’s Biological Horror Debut
Peter Neal’s debut Womb of Shadows — Book One of the Gods of the New Age trilogy — is biological horror at its most intimate and most devastating. Dr. Evelyn Hart injects her infant daughter with an unauthorised gene therapy and sets in motion a chain of events connecting a Virginia family to a classified military programme and a boy whose skin produces a compound that rewrites human attachment from the inside. Literary in its prose, ferocious in its moral questions, and unlike anything else in contemporary horror, Womb of Shadows is a book that gets under your skin and repurposes you from within.
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.
Cruising by Dean Cade, Review: The Summer of 1973 Never Felt so Terrifying
Dean Cade’s debut horror novel Cruising sets a closeted gay teenager’s summer against the real historical backdrop of the Houston Mass Murders, the worst serial murder case in American history. Published by Slashic Horror Press in March 2026, the first book in the Summer 1973 trilogy earns its horror through patience, historical precision, and a portrait of queer vulnerability in 1973 Texas that is both formally controlled and genuinely devastating. Read the full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Philip Fracassi’s Gothic: The Horror of Wanting Too Much
Philip Fracassi’s Gothic follows Tyson Parks, a struggling horror novelist who receives an antique desk that channels an ancient evil through his creative desperation. In our full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror, we examine why this cursed-object novel is one of the sharpest entries in the writer-descending-into-madness subgenre in years, and why Fracassi’s multi-POV structure and pulp-literary sensibility make it something considerably more unsettling than nostalgia.
Eliza Jabore on Backstabbers: Weaponising Slasher Tropes & Dismantling Friendship in Her Exceptional Debut
Eliza Jabore’s debut Backstabbers reimagines the slasher as a pressure test for female friendship — our interview explores what makes this 2026 release a genuinely subversive entry in horror fiction.
Out Law by Jim Butcher Review: Harry Dresden’s Best Side Quest Yet
Out Law is vintage Dresden in a smaller package. Harry owes Marcone a debt, and the repayment involves helping a former criminal go straight. The IRS gets involved. An Aztec demon gets involved. Harry’s patience gets tested. The novella’s real magic is the moral friction: redemption is hard, awkward, and maybe impossible. But Butcher makes you root for it anyway. Lean prose, sharp action, genuine heart. The best Dresden novella yet.
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.
Last Z Survival Shooter 2026: Is This the Best Zombie Strategy Game on Mobile Right Now?
Last Z Survival Shooter 2026: Is This the Best Zombie Strategy Game on Mobile Right Now? The mobile zombie game market in 2026 is drowning in its own dead weight. Title after title slaps some rotting faces on a base-builder, calls it a survival game, and expects horror fans to … Last Z Survival Shooter 2026: Is This the Best Zombie Strategy Game on Mobile Right Now?Read more
3 Masterpiece Horror Games That Unknowingly Subverted the Law to Turn Your Soul Into a Playable Currency
3 Masterpiece Horror Games That Unknowingly Subverted the Law to Turn Your Soul Into a Playable Currency Modern gaming is built around currency systems. Every major game asks players to spend something valuable to progress. Sometimes that currency is obvious, like gold, experience points, loot, or crafting materials. Other times … 3 Masterpiece Horror Games That Unknowingly Subverted the Law to Turn Your Soul Into a Playable CurrencyRead more
Writing Horror as an Act of Resistance: Amy Jane Stewart on Her Debut Hex House
Writing horror as an act of resistance, Amy Jane Stewart unpacks how her debut Hex House uses Scottish folklore to confront violence against women.
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.