Forget the shimmery monofins and the singing crab. Ava Morwood, author of Until We Drown, traces mermaid folklore through its strangest corners: Peak District drowning pools, Japanese ningyo, the Feejee Mermaid and a scholar who blamed the plague on rotting merfolk. Dark mermaid legends as you have never heard them.
C.N. Vair’s The Devil Knows Her Name (published as Fawn in the UK) reimagines witchcraft as costly, physical, and entwined with Appalachian land. In this interview, she discusses the novel’s ecological argument, its refusal to romanticise magic, and what it means to write for the women who were called rebellious.
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.
C.N. Vair’s debut folk horror novel The Devil Knows Her Name follows Tess Wynne, a century-old witch bound to her Appalachian land by a devil’s bargain, running a wildlife sanctuary against every threat the community and the devil himself can bring. Precise, slow-burning, and built on a genuine ecological and feminist argument, this is Appalachian horror at its most assured. Full review at Ginger Nuts of Horror.
Jeff Strand’s Fun Times at the Bloodbath is horror comedy with teeth, a video game horror novel about a playtest no one can quit. The Bram Stoker Award winning author weaponises the attention economy and folds extreme horror into his sharpest comic engine yet. Here is why it gets under your skin.
Sara Hinkley’s The Red Sacrament is historical vampire horror with a sharp political edge, set in a midnight Paris theatre in 1869. My review digs into the slow dread, the gorgeous gothic prose, and the way this queer vampire novel turns the Anne Rice tradition toward class, labour, and the coming Paris Commune.
Leah Rowan’s debut Marion reimagines Psycho with one savage swap: the woman in the shower fights back and kills Norm. My review digs into this feminist horror standout, from its dark humor and dual-POV craft to its themes of female rage, sisterhood, and surviving domestic abuse.
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.
H.M. Wolfe’s Daggermouth is being sold as dark dystopian romance, but it reads like social horror with the safety off. In New Found Haven, love outside your ring is a death sentence, feminine rage is a survival skill, and a forced marriage becomes a cage. Here is why this enemies-to-lovers opener to The Heart duology belongs on any dark fiction shelf.
Costume designer Sarah Hinkley spent years dressing other people’s stories on the sets of SVU and Monsterland. Now she’s written her own: The Red Sacrament, a debut vampire novel set in a starving, besieged 1870 Paris. We talked queer vampire fiction, the long shadow of Interview with the Vampire, and why her immortals are petty, risk-averse, and far too tired of each other.
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Slasher Summer drops seven friends, each named after a slasher icon, back into the cabin where a cult ’80s film was shot. E. L. Chen talks to Ginger Nuts of Horror about the Final Girl, slasher tropes, the nostalgia economy, and writing diverse horror into a canon that killed people like her first. From Sweetside Motel to a Final Girl she keeps marching back onto set, Chen is the literary slasher’s sharpest new voice.
Tracy Fahey’s Queens of the Crone Age (PS Publishing, 2026) wakes the Cailleach, the Hag of Beara, and threads standalone tales into one long incantation. My review digs into why this feminist folk horror collection, steeped in Irish mythology and the power of older women, is some of the boldest work of her career.
Every reviewer lies about the horror books they didn’t finish. This is my DNF confessional, five abandoned novels, the page I quit on, and the daft personal reasons I never made it to the end. Folk horror, slashers, and one book that made me put the telly on.
Stephanie Campisi kills off her mentor figure on page eighteen and rehires her as a ghost. In this interview the author of The Unfinished Business talks through her middle grade ghost story: grief played for laughs, a factory fire turned labour satire, and the one death the book refuses to console. Required reading for anyone tracking where cosy horror for kids goes next.
