The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Graphic animal death

Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce

Newly minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. Instead she aimlessly spends her days stuck in the stifling heat wave sweeping across Britain and anxiously contemplates her upcoming marriage to careful, precise researcher Oscar. The only reprieve from her small, close world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago. Then she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day, and he has a proposition for her: Thirteen-year-old Alice Webber claims a witch is haunting her… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother recounted

Monster Tree by Sarah Allen

Linus used to be an artist, like his dad. Then his father died and Linus’s mom moved them to the other side of the city, hoping for a fresh start. Maybe, for the first time since losing Dad, Linus will even start drawing again. But there’s something unusual about their new neighbor Maude, and something wrong with the grotesque tree in her backyard. At night Linus sees it moving, changing, growing. When increasingly bizarre events plague the neighborhood—massive claw marks, missing pets, sightings of a red-eyed creature—he suspects Maude and her tree are to blame… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Asthma
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a father in a car accident discussed
  • Kidnapping

Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she’s just inherited — to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement — Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead. Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family’s property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can’t really live, either. Not while he’s bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths. There’s only one way for him to break free. He needs to end the Westlock line… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Self-injury
  • Suicide by cutting throat
  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Minor body horror
  • Torture recounted
  • Physical assault (fistfights) & stabbing
  • Drowning mentioned
  • Choking
  • Cult
  • Fire & arson
  • Animal death (chicken)

I Am Made of Death by Kelly Andrew

Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother’s medical bills. When he’s offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas — the hearing child of a Deaf adult — jumps at the opportunity. But the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Nonconsensual surgery
  • Murder & ritual human sacrifice
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun violence
  • Choking
  • Fistfights resulting in hospitalisation

They Bloom at Night by Ava Reid

A red algae bloom has taken over Mercy, Louisiana. Ever since a devastating hurricane, mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day. But Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: The Cove, where Noon’s life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on. Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape… Read more,

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, biphobia & transphobia
  • Sexual assault

Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix

Obey the rules. It’s the only way to survive the night in a short story about what hides in the dark by the New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Marcus grew up believing his father killed his mother—then blamed it on the boogeyman under the bed. Always leave the lights on, his father warned, or the boogeyman will get you. Marcus still heeds the superstition, especially when he invites his new girlfriend over. Is Marcus haunted by a creature or has he just inherited his father’s murderous delusions? The night will tell.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Imprisonment

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Traumatic pregnancy & childbirth (theme)

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca

A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned (brief)
  • Incest
  • Emotional & verbal child abuse
  • Miscarriage & stillbirth
  • Body horror
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Death of a child mentioned
  • Murder
  • Animal death

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories by Eric LaRocca

Eight stories of literary dark fiction from a master storyteller. Exploring the shadow side of love, these are tales of grief, obsession, control. Intricate examinations of trauma and tragedy in raw, poetic prose. In these narratives, a woman imagines horrific scenarios whilst caring for her infant niece; on-line posts chronicle a cancer diagnosis; a couple in the park with their small child encounter a stranger with horrific consequences; a toxic relationship reaches a terrifying resolution…

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abusive relationship
  • Elder abuse
  • Incest
  • Cheating
  • Miscarriage
  • Cancer & terminal illness
  • Death of a parent & spouse
  • Murder & torture
  • Kidnapping