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What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: A lush, terrifying descent into the Void

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s What Feeds Below is an immersive fantasy horror novel filled with lush worldbuilding, gruesome monsters, claustrophobic environments, and enough heart-pounding action to make you feel as though you’re trapped alongside its characters in the depths of the earth.

At the edge of the City of the Void lies a massive chasm that stretches miles underground. Known simply as the Void, its layers are filled with monsters, carnivorous plants, and dangers that become increasingly difficult to understand—and survive—as travelers descend. For Petra and Jade, two orphaned best friends living in the city’s slums, the Void is also a way out. They make money by guiding tourists who are willing to risk their lives in search of whatever treasures might be waiting below.

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The Sisters of Crimson House by Melissa Anderson Sweazy: A Southern Gothic about family secrets and inherited expectations

Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s The Sisters of Crimson House is a Southern Gothic horror novel about a family of psychics, a haunted Memphis mansion, and the secrets that can shape a person’s entire understanding of who they are. I have to admit that I approached this book with some skepticism. Lately, just about every book I’ve read that has been compared to Practical Magic has turned out to be a dud for me, so when I opened the description of The Sisters of Crimson House and saw that comparison, I groaned. Out loud. But I had already received the ARC, so I figured I might as well give it a chance.

Fortunately, The Sisters of Crimson House turned out to be better than the recent Practical Magic comps that have disappointed me. It isn’t a book I would put in the same category as one of my favorites, but there was enough going on to keep me reading, and that’s something. At least I didn’t DNF this one.

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In the Woods They Wait: An eerie Southern Gothic that saves its scariest tricks for too late

There’s something in the woods, and it has been waiting for someone to notice. Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait is an atmospheric Southern Gothic horror novel about grief, guilt, missing children, and an ancient presence lurking in the woods. The slow-burn mystery kept me reading, but the rushed final act and underwhelming reveal kept the novel from reaching its full potential.

In Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait, the woods surrounding Devil’s Den State Park are more than a backdrop. They are a presence—ancient, watchful, and seemingly hungry. Fifteen years after Audrey Figg’s younger brother, Benny, disappeared from the park, she has made a life for herself among the very trees that swallowed him. As a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, Audrey has turned her grief into a vocation, spending her days protecting hikers and searching the backcountry for the person she has never stopped hoping to find. When a young girl named Ivy disappears from the same woods, Audrey sees too many similarities to Benny’s disappearance to believe it is a coincidence.

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Rooted by Leopoldo Goût: A horror novel about memory, history, and ancient gods

What if the past isn’t really the past? In Rooted, Leopoldo Goût turns a woman’s return to Mexico City into a terrifying confrontation with buried memories, ancient gods, and a world that refuses to remain neatly separated into the categories modern humanity has created for it. The result is a horror novel that is as much about our relationship to the world around us as it is about supernatural terror.

Rooted, which releases September 15, 2026, follows Aurora, a successful art lawyer who returns to Mexico to celebrate a campaign she helped lead to repatriate stolen artifacts, including a mysterious statue of an Aztec god known as the Flayed One. But her homecoming quickly becomes unsettling. Mexico City is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and Aurora begins to experience impossible memories, disturbing dreams, and increasingly frightening distortions of reality. There is nothing wrong with Aurora—or at least, that is what everyone keeps telling her.

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Strange Is the Light by Sarah Maria Griffin: A dark fantasy of friendship, betrayal, and consequences

What happens when the games you invented as children turn out to be more real than you ever imagined? In Sarah Maria Griffin’s Strange Is the Light, a childhood game becomes the doorway to something ancient, dangerous, and very much alive—and the friends who created it must finally reckon with the consequences of the last time they played.

Strange Is the Light follows Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, four childhood friends whose lives have been intertwined by a strange and somewhat magical summer friendship. Three of them live year-round on the island of Valentia, while Daphne visits only during the summers. At the center of their friendship is a game they have created together, one that begins as the kind of elaborate play-acting children do and gradually evolves into something closer to the role-playing games we know today. They create a world, invent stories and characters, and take turns building the narrative together.

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She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove turns the haunted-doll story upside down

What if the creepy haunted doll isn’t the monster in the story—but the victim who has finally come back to make her killer pay? That’s the deliciously dark premise behind Barbara Truelove’s She’s a Doll, a horror novel that takes the familiar haunted-doll story and gives it a very satisfying twist. Instead of an innocent person becoming the target of an inexplicably murderous antique doll, this time the doll has every reason to be angry. Lucy McQuinn was murdered, and now her ghost has taken up residence in an eighteen-inch porcelain body. She may be small, but she has unfinished business with Kyle, the man who killed her.

There’s something wonderfully subversive about the way Truelove approaches the haunted-doll trope. We’re accustomed to assuming that the doll is the threat. The creepy porcelain face, the old-fashioned clothes, the unnatural movements—everything about a haunted doll is designed to make us wonder what it’s going to do to us.

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We Are for the Dark by Gretchen McNeil: An unsettling descent into Newfoundland horror

What if a missing-person investigation led you to an island where nothing is quite what it seems—and something ancient beneath the ground is very, very hungry? Gretchen McNeil’s We Are for the Dark, releasing September 1, 2026, takes that premise and turns it into a fast-paced supernatural horror story filled with isolated communities, religious unease, strange traditions, and a growing sense that the people arriving on the island may have made a terrible mistake.

McNeil’s novel begins with Father Shane Ryan, a recently ordained Catholic priest with an unusual past as an FBI analyst. When a priest disappears from a remote island off the coast of Newfoundland, Cardinal Jacobs calls on Ryan to investigate. At roughly the same time, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary constable Miriam Rideout becomes concerned about a frantic call she received from the missing priest. When her superiors refuse to authorize a wellness check, Miriam takes matters into her own hands and travels to the island herself. Naturally, the two eventually end up together—and neither is particularly thrilled about it.

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The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan: A haunting literary horror novel about motherhood, myth, and generational trauma

Some books arrive with impossible expectations, and somehow, they still manage to exceed them. Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters is one of those rare novels that not only lived up to my hopes but cemented her place as one of my favorite voices in literary horror.

When I saw that this ARC had finally reached the top of my NetGalley reading queue, I couldn’t have been more excited. Because I read mostly advance reader copies, my reading schedule is dictated almost entirely by publication dates. Givhan’s Salt Bones was my favorite book of 2025, and I absolutely loved River Woman, River Demon, so this latest novel was an automatic must-read. I was thrilled when my request for an advance copy was approved, and it quickly reminded me why I keep recommending her work every chance I get.

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Dreamland by Olivie Blake: Hollywood gothic horror wrapped in occult secrets

Hollywood dreams have always come with a price, and in Dreamland, Olivie Blake imagines that price as a centuries-old curse lurking behind one of the film industry’s most powerful dynasties. Blending gothic horror, occult mythology, and sharp social commentary, Blake crafts an atmospheric novel filled with unforgettable ideas—even if its ambitious storytelling doesn’t always land as cleanly as its vision deserves.

Anya Morris has spent years believing she’s destined for something greater than working part-time in her family’s store while enduring her mother’s constant dismissal of her acting ambitions. When an unexpected invitation arrives from the de Witts—one of Hollywood’s most influential and enigmatic film families—it seems like the breakthrough she’s been waiting for.

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Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist: An unforgettable haunted house story that loses its nerve

Some horror novels know exactly how to get under your skin—until they decide to explain themselves. Unfortunately, Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist is one of them. Releasing July 14, 2026, Home Sick begins as one of the freshest psychological horror novels I’ve read in quite some time. Combining eerie Scottish folklore, an unsettling haunted house, and an unreliable narrator whose own emotional instability makes every strange occurrence suspect, the novel creates an atmosphere thick with dread. For roughly three-quarters of the book, I was completely invested.

After a violent incident at work, Tamsin escapes to a secluded cottage in the Scottish countryside, hoping distance will allow her to reinvent herself. Instead, she discovers that her isolated retreat shares a wall with a mysterious neighbor whose shifting personality and unnerving smile make her impossible to ignore. As increasingly bizarre disturbances plague the house, local legends begin to blur with Tamsin’s growing paranoia, leaving both her—and the reader—questioning what is real.

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