Category Archives: Horror

A Righteous Man by Tochi Onyebuchi

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Racism & classism
  • Hate crime
  • Rape
  • Miscarriage
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Mass shooting
  • Kidnapping
  • Colonisation
  • Animal death & cruelty

We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado

Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove. However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Associ… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & homophobia
  • Child abuse & neglect, including mentions of a parent slashing her child with a knife after they came out
  • Anxiety & alcoholism
  • Suicide
  • Death of a child
  • Blood & gore depiction, including minor body horror & depiction of dead bodies
  • Car accident
  • Fire

We Don’t Swim Here by Vincent Tirado

Bronwyn is only supposed to be in rural Hillwoods for a year. Her grandmother is in hospice, and her father needs to get her affairs in order. And they’re all meant to make some final memories together. Except Bronwyn is miserable. Her grandmother is dying, everyone is standoffish, and she can’t even go swimming. All she hears are warnings about going in the water, despite a gorgeous lake. And a pool at the abandoned rec center. And another in the high school basement. Anais ties her hardest to protect Bronwyn from the shad… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Hate crime
  • Suicide discussed
  • Hospitalisation
  • Emesis
  • Murder
  • Drowning

All I Want For Christmas is the Girl Next Door by Chelsea Bobulski

Graham Wallace has been in love with the girl next door for a decade. Unfortunately, she’s been dating his best friend for the past two years. Out of sheer desperation, Graham makes a wish on a shooting star—all he wants for Christmas is Sarah Clarke. When Graham wakes up the next morning, everything has changed, and he’s the one who’s been dating Sarah for the past two years, not his best friend. Graham assumes the wish would have only come true if he and Sarah were meant to be together, but as it becomes clear that he… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Dieting & self-starvation discussed
  • Drowning

We Won’t All Survive by Kate Alice Marshall

Two years ago Mercy Gray was hailed as a hero for saving lives during a mall shooting. She still carries souvenirs from that incident: the fragment of a bullet lodged in her back, a mountain of medical debt, and guilt for ignoring her sister’s warnings that the sweet boy next door was anything but. When billionaire-turned-TV-host Damien Dare recruits Mercy to compete on his new survivalist reality show, she can’t turn down a chance at the whopping cash prize that could send her sister to college—but when she and the other contestants arrive at the off-grid location… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • On-going medical condition from gunshot wound sustained in a mass shooting discussed (protagonist)
  • Murder & mass shooting discussed & recounted
  • Kidnapping & stalking

Brackenbeast by Kate Alice Marshall

Last Halloween, Eleanor, Pip, and Otto narrowly escaped the clutches of the evil January Society and their leader. But life in the too-quiet Eden Eld isn’t safe just yet: according to the bargain they made with Mr. January, it’s now his sister’s turn to hunt the three of them. And her methods are a bit more…treacherous. When their friends and neighbors begin disappearing, abducted by strange, mud-drenched monsters, Eleanor and her two best friends must race to uncover their enemy’s secrets. If they fail, their families will be next. Stalked by the relentless mud beasts… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted murder
  • Kidnapping

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring…. In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Minor body horror
  • Animal death (rat, decapitated by a cat)

Clever Little Thing by Helena Echlin

Charlotte’s daughter Stella is sensitive and brilliant, perhaps even a genius, but a recent change in her behavior has alarmed her mother. Following the sudden death of Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, the once disruptive and anti-social child has become docile and agreeable. But what’s unsettling is that she has begun to mirror Blanka’s personality, from Blanka’s repetitive phrases to her accent, to fierce cravings for Armenian meat stew after being raised a vegetarian. Charlotte is pregnant with her second child, and depleted and sick with the pregnancy. She is convinced that Blanka… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Infidelity
  • Suicide

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs. Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can’t remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she’s a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death

When the Bones Sing by Ginny Myers Sain

The past three years have been tough for Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas, a small town quietly tucked away in the Ozark mountains. More than two dozen people have disappeared on the local hiking trails; there one moment, gone the next, not a trace left behind, until their buried bodies are discovered. 17-year-old Dovie doesn’t believe in magic even though she comes from a long line of women who can hear the bones of the dead sing, and for the past few years the bones have been crooning nonstop, calling out to Dovie… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse & domestic violence including setting fire to a cabin with wife & child inside
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Death of a mother mentioned
  • Death of a grandfather from a fall into a ravine
  • Murder by arrow to the throat
  • Gun violence & threats of gun violence
  • Physical assault (hit in the head with a rock)
  • Disappearance of a parent discussed
  • Drowning & near-drowning
  • Accidental poisoning mentioned