Peace Mbengei’s We Run the Night turns a Kenyan boarding school into a sealed arena for folklore, grief and body horror. This five-star YA horror debut makes the night runners frightening, but the adults who refuse to listen are worse.
YA Horror
Peace Mbengei Interview: We Run the Night and the Luo Night Runners
Peace Mbengei talks through her debut YA horror novel We Run the Night, where Luo night runners turn grief into body horror inside a Kenyan boarding school. She discusses the strangler fig at the story’s centre, the institutional cover up that follows, and why forgiveness, not revenge, sets her heroine free.
Five New YA Horror Novels: Which Ones Deliver? – The Young Blood Library August Round-Up
Tony Jones rounds up five new YA horror novels for August 2026. Cynthia Murphy’s Paint Me Like Your Dead Girls leads the pack as a top recommendation for schools, while Vincent Ralph’s Bleak Haven Quartet ends on a minor high. Melinda Salisbury and Jacqueline West deliver Folk Horror and small town chills.
Vincent Ralph on Bleak Haven, Corpse Creek and the Uses of Grief
Vincent Ralph talks us through Corpse Creek, the grief horror centrepiece of his Bleak Haven series, and the drowned brother who will not stay under. He explains how four YA horror novels rework R.L. Stine’s Fear Street into something darker, and why Fear Farm had to end the whole thing in blood.
The Horror of My Life: Yuvashri Harish on Kill Your Darlings and YA Horror
Yuvashri Harish takes the Ginger Nuts of Horror questionnaire ahead of her YA horror novel Kill Your Darlings. She talks Goosebumps, Carrie, and the one viewing of The Exorcist she has never managed to repeat. She also names the classic horror monsters behind her Halloween novel, and explains why her next book is cannibalism soulmate horror.
Rebecca Barrow on Doe: Inside Her YA Horror Novel in Verse
Rebecca Barrow’s Doe is a YA horror novel in verse about a cheer captain, a centuries-tired deer creature, and the dangerous pull between girls. In our interview, Barrow digs into feminist horror, female rage, and why she wrote the squad as a single hive-mind “we.” A must-read for fans of Bad Things Happen Here and dual-timeline horror.
