The leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and there's a chill in the air. That means it's time to get spooky! Enjoy some 2021 horror and dark fantasy releases. Be sure to brew up a cup of tea - or potion! - to keep away the chill as you read.
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New Horror Fiction for Adults
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Slewfoot : a tale of bewitchery
by Brom A recently widowed outcast, Abitha turns to Slewfoot, an ancient spirit who has awakened in a dark wood, for help, and together they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan, leaving ashes and bloodshed in their wake. |
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The girls are all so nice here
by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Receiving ominous threats during a 10-year college reunion, Ambrosia and her best friend discover that they are being targeted by an unknown adversary who would exact revenge for a dangerous secret from their past. |
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Star eater
by Kerstin Hall Elfred Raugh, horrified by the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline, becomes a spy for a shadowy cabal, gaining access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood where she enters a world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions and unexpected bloodshed. |
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The final girl support group
by Grady Hendrix A real-life “final girl”— the one girl always left standing at the end of a horror movie — Lynette Tarkington, who survived a massacre 22 years ago, along with five other final girls, works to overcome her past until someone becomes determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece. |
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My heart is a chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones Protected by horror movies—especially the ones where the masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them—Jade Daniels, an angry, half-Indian outcast, pulls us into her dark mind when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian lake. |
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The All-consuming World
by Cassandra Khaw Getting back together for one last mission — saving a missing and much-changed comrade and solve the mystery of their last disastrous mission — a diverse team of broken, diminished former criminals must battle their own traumas to survive a universe sapient ageships who want them dead. |
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Billy Summers : a novel
by Stephen King Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? |
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Rovers : a novel
by Richard Lange Two immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous biker gang and protect a young woman. |
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The helm of midnight
by Marina J. Lostetter When a death mask imbued with the spirit of a historical serial killer is brazenly stolen by thieves, an outbreak of terrifying murders reveals the mind of a calculating perpetrator who is searching for answers. |
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Certain dark things
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia In Mexico City, where the creatures of the night are kept at bay, trash-picking street kid Domingo helps Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, escape the city when two vampires come to find her and start to raise the body count, attracting the attention of police officers, local crime bosses and the vampire community. |
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Flowers for the Sea
by Zin E. Rocklyn Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp. Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine. |
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Survive the night : a novel
by Riley Sager When her best friend is the third victim of a serial killer targeting college students, Charlie, deciding to leave campus, accepts a ride home from Josh Baxter and, realizing his true identity too late, must win a twisted game of cat and mouse by surviving the night. |
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Sorrowland
by Rivers Solomon Fleeing from the strict religious compound where she was raised, Vern, in the safety of the forest, gives birth to twins, and to keep her small family safe, unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of. |
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No gods, no monsters : a novel
by Cadwell Turnbull When creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, setting off a chain of seemingly unrelated events, people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase and protests erupt globally—until the world finds out what has frightened the monsters out of the dark. |
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Dead space
by Kali Wallace After a life-altering terrorist attack, a woman working dead-end security job for a powerful asteroid-mining company is contacted by a fellow victim who claims to have shocking information about their shared tragedy just before he is murdered in space. |
New Horror Fiction for Teens and Tweens
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Doom in the deep
by Josh Berk MIDDLE GRADE/TWEEN: After unraveling the haunting of Lake Sweetwater and helping the ghosts to rest, Tez is ready to kick back and make the most of the few weeks of summer camp they have left, but when Ew tells Corryn her strange dreams about the lake, Corryn's on high alert and the first to notice the counselors' fixation with getting kids in the lake and the subsequent memory loss experienced by those kids. |
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The forgotten girl
by India Hill Brown MIDDLE GRADE/TEEN: Sneaking out with her best friend to play in the freshly fallen snow on a cold winter night, Iris discovers an abandoned grave before experiencing vivid nightmares that compel her investigation into the story of a Black cemetery from the segregation era. |
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The taking of Jake Livingston
by Ryan Douglass TEEN: When a murderous ghost begins to haunt sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston, high school soon becomes a different kind of survival game. |
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The forest of stolen girls
by June Hur TEEN: When her detective father goes missing while investigating the disappearance of 13 young women, including her sister, Hwani returns to their early 15th-century village in Korea to uncover dark community secrets. |
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White Smoke
by Tiffany D. Jackson TEEN: Believing her new home to actually be alive, especially when her brother almost dies, Marigold and her new blended family won’t be safe until she brings the truth to light once and for all. |
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Deadman's Castle
by Iain Lawrence MIDDLE GRADE/TWEEN: 12-year-old Igor and his family have been on the run from the sinister figure he calls The Lizard Man for as long as he can remember and he wishes that they could just live a normal life. |
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Ghost girl
by Ally Malinenko MIDDLE GRADE/TEEN: Zee Puckett loves ghost stories. She just never expected to be living one. It all starts with a dark and stormy night. When the skies clear, everything is different. People are missing. And Zee is seeing frightening things: large, scary dogs that talk and maybe even . . . a ghost. When she tells her classmates, only her best friend Elijah believes her. Worse, mean girl Nellie gives Zee a cruel nickname: Ghost Girl. But whatever the storm washed up isn't going away. To fight for what's right, Zee will have to embrace what makes her different and what makes her Ghost Girl. And all three of them--Zee, Elijah, and Nellie--will have to work together if they want to give their ghost story a happy ending. |
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The Mary Shelley Club
by Goldy Moldavsky TEEN: Struggling to fit in as a scholarship student at an elite prep school, newcomer Rachel Chavez is caught up in a prank gone wrong before attracting the attention of a secret club of students who compete with each other for the best scary pranks. |
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The woods are always watching
by Stephanie Perkins TEEN: When two girls go backpacking deep in the woods of the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, things go very wrong when they cross paths with a serial killer. |
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The City Beautiful
by Aden Polydoros TEEN: In 1893 Chicago, after his best friend becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, Alter Rosen is plunged into a nightmare where he is thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. |
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Root magic
by Eden Royce MIDDLE GRADE/TWEEN: Eleven-year-old twins Jez and Jay begin training with their uncle, Doc, in the African American folk magic known as rootwork, but soon Jez found out that her family's true power goes beyond magical potions and elixirs. |
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What big teeth
by Rose Szabo TEEN: Returning to Maine after years at boarding school, Eleanor Zarrin barely remembers her monstrous family, but she sets off a series of events that could destroy them all. |
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Dagger Hill
by Devon Taylor TEEN: After a catastrophic incident in the summer of 1989, four best friends—Kimberly, Gabe, Charlie and Sonya—are hunted by a sinister presence who is holding Kimberly hostage, making them realize that this incident was no accident. |
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Squad
by Maggie Tokuda-Hall TEEN GRAPHIC NOVEL: Becca moves to an upscale Silicon Valley suburb and is surprised when she develops a bond with girls who belong to the popular clique-and even more surprised when she learns their secrets. |
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The Ash House
by Angharad Walker MIDDLE GRADE/TWEEN: Seeking a cure for his pain syndrome at a home for children who have turned feral after their mysterious abandonment, 11-year-old Sol learns that illness is forbidden in the strange institution, before the arrival of a mysterious doctor coincides with Sol’s fading grip on reality. |