Category Archives: Horror

The Ash House by Angharad Walker

The Ash House by Angharad Walker

The Ash House by Angharad Walker

When Eleven-year-old Sol arrives at the Ash House, desperate for a cure for his complex pain syndrome, he finds a community of strange children long abandoned by their mysterious Headmaster.

The children at the Ash House want the new boy to love their home as much as they do. They give him a name like theirs. They show him the dorms and tell him about the wonderful oasis that the Headmaster has created for them. But the new boy already has a name. Doesn’t he? At least he did before he walked through those gates…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Medical experimentation
  • Blood depiction
  • Physical injury & illness
  • Chronic pain
  • Kidnapping implied
  • Captivity implied
  • Animal attack

Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology edited by Azzurra Nox

Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology edited by Azzurra Nox

Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology by Azzurra Nox

You know them. Those girls that aren’t quite like everyone else. Those girls who stand out in the crowd. Those girls that dare to be different. Those girls are dangerous.

In Strange Girls, twenty-one authors dare to tackle what makes the girls in this collection different. Vampires, selkies, murderous mermaids, succubus, and possessed dolls take center stage in these short stories that are sure to invoke feelings of quiet terror and uneasiness in the reader. Following the successful debut of Women in Horror anthology with My American Nightmare, Strange Girls is the sophomore effort to showcase these talented women in a genre that is often dominated by the male gaze.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault
  • Toxic relationship
  • Rape
  • Death
  • Murder
  • Stalking
  • Forced outing
  • Bullying
  • Necrophilia

In Every Generation by Kendare Blake 

In Every Generation by Kendare Blake

Frankie Rosenberg is passionate about the environment, a sophomore at New Sunnydale High School, and the daughter of the most powerful witch in Sunnydale history. Her mom, Willow, is slowly teaching her magic on the condition that she use it to better the world. But Frankie’s happily quiet life is upended when new girl Hailey shows up with news that the annual Slayer convention has been the target of an attack, and all the Slayers—including Buffy, Faith, and Hailey’s older sister Vi—might be dead. That means it’s time for this generation’s Slayer to be born.

But being the first ever Slayer-Witch means learning how to wield a stake while trying to control her budding powers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Coerced self-injury
  • Blood & gore depiction, including blood-drinking
  • Dismemberment & decapitation
  • Death of parents in a car accident recounted
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Exsangination
  • Explosion

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake 

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake

Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.

September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.

Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake 

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Physical injury & illness
  • Dead body
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Death of a pet cat

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success — but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania.

Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western – she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry’s meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris’s very soul… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Substance addiction mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Gun violence

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. For more than a decade she’s been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcoholism

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Torture

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shared love of E.T., roller-skating parties, and scratch-and-sniff stickers. But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behaviour start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favourite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableist language
  • Date rape mentioned
  • Attempted suicide
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Death of a baby
  • Animal death (dog)
  • Kidnapping

Dreamfall by Amy Plum

Dreamfall by Amy Plum

Dreamfall by Amy Plum

Cata Cordova suffers from such debilitating insomnia that she agreed to take part in an experimental new procedure. She thought things couldn’t get any worse…but she was terribly wrong.

Soon after the experiment begins, there’s a malfunction with the lab equipment, and Cata and six other teen patients are plunged into a shared dreamworld with no memory of how they got there. Even worse, they come to the chilling realization that they are trapped in a place where their worst nightmares have come to life. Hunted by creatures from their darkest imaginations and tormented by secrets they’d rather keep buried, Cata and the others will be forced to band together to face their biggest fears. And if they can’t find a way to defeat their dreams, they will never wake up.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Mental health stigmatization
  • Child abuse
  • Domestic violence
  • Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
  • Depression
  • Narcolepsy
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Eating disorders
  • Psychosis
  • Suicidal tendencies
  • Self sacrifice
  • Sleep disorders, specifically chronic insomnia
  • Nightmares
  • Medical experimentation
  • Coma
  • Scars
  • Gore depiction
  • Genocide
  • War themes