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.
Horror Promotion
The Hands That Make You Flinch: Furry Puppet Studio, Why Horror Loves Puppets
Puppets in horror work because someone built them to be loved first. Furry Puppet Studio, the NYC custom puppet maker behind work for Apple, Casper, and Missy Elliott, shows why practical-effects horror keeps reaching for handmade faces. From Puppet Master to Dead Silence to Longlegs, the craft that delights is the same craft that frightens.
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.
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.
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.
Cymera Book Haul: Nine Books, One Ghost Cat, and a Water Heater Closet That Goes Nowhere Good, and Loads of the Uncanny
Ginger Nuts of Horror’s Jim McLeod reviews his book horror haul from Cymera Book Festival: Stephen Graham Jones x2, Sunyi Dean, Charlotte Cross, Amy Jane Stewart. Dread, ghosts, and a water heater closet to nowhere. Full roundup at GNOH.
Sunyi Dean’s The Girl with a Thousand Faces: A Gothic Ghost Story
Sunyi Dean’s The Girl with a Thousand Faces (Tor/HarperVoyager, May 2026) is a structurally daring gothic horror set in an alternate 1975 Kowloon Walled City, where fifty-three-year-old triad ghost talker Mercy Chan is forced to confront a powerful new spirit and the past she cannot remember. Drawing on Chinese ghost lore, the real history of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, and a bold four-timeline narrative, Dean’s second novel is a deeply personal, formally ambitious work that confirms her as one of the most interesting voices in the genre today. This is Jim McLeod’s full review for Ginger Nuts of Horror.
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.
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.
Georgia Summers’ Trollheim: Nordic Folk Horror Done Right
Georgia Summers’ Trollheim: Tale of Sýstir announces itself in its opening pages as something different from the usual Nordic-flavoured fantasy. This is folk horror rooted in genuine Huldra mythology, the figure from Scandinavian folklore whose name derives from the Old Norse huldr, meaning “covered” or “secret.” When Sýstir’s mother is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, Summers is not using the witch trial as backdrop decoration. She is placing her story inside a specific, historical horror that resonates because it never entirely stopped being present. Sýstir, half-human and half-Huldra, escapes into the Dark Forest known as Trollheim, taken in by the rogue troll Agagkantor and accompanied by a wildcat companion named Fulgir, building a found family from the materials of loss and displacement.
The Gothic Puzzle Box, A Conversation with Ande Pliego
What Pliego builds in The Library After Dark is less a locked-room mystery and more a labyrinth where the architecture itself remembers, each corridor a mirror reflecting the protagonist’s buried history and the lies she has told herself to survive.
Femme Feral Review: Sam Beckbessinger’s Feminist Werewolf Novel
Some horror novels make you check under the bed. Sam Beckbessinger’s Femme Feral makes you check your own reflection for teeth. This feminist body horror novel about a queer photographer’s lycanthropic liberation is a howl of feminine rage you won’t forget.
S.A. Barnes Interview: From Space Horror to Dark Academia Romantasy
Claustrophobic space stations. Corporate corruption bleeding into deep space. A doomed luxury cruiser lost for decades, its halls still wet. S.A. Barnes built a devoted readership on sci-fi horror that traps you in the dark with nowhere to run.
Now she’s swapped the wreckage for a dusty university library. But don’t mistake the change of clothes for a change of temper.
Abyss by Nicholas Binge Review: A Corporate Horror That Hits Too Close to Home
Joe Rice walks into an empty office in Canary Wharf. He sits down at a computer. An AI asks him how he is feeling. And the abyss opens. Not beneath his feet. Beneath his chair.
Don’t hand in your notice. You won’t live to regret it.
Help Ginger Nuts of Horror Survive: 18 Years of Horror Reviews
For 18 years, Ginger Nuts of Horror has been a voice the horror genre refused to silence. Now we need your help to keep the server running. I’m Jim Mcleod, the founder of Ginger Nuts of Horror. I started this website on a whim while recovering from surgery, heavily medicated, … Help Ginger Nuts of Horror Survive: 18 Years of Horror ReviewsRead more