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FINALIST FOR THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD * FINALIST FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD * FINALIST FOR THE THIS IS HORROR AWARD * HONORABLE MENTION, LOCUS AWARDS * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2016 BY TOR.COM AND BOOK RIOT
A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy, whose family lives on the fringe of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and fears them.
He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his aunt Libby and uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixed blood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle, or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.
For ten years, he and his family have lived a life of late-night exits and narrow escapes--always on the move across the South to stay one step ahead of the law. But the time is drawing near when Darren and Libby will finally know if their nephew is like them or not. And the close calls they've been running from for so long are catching up fast now. Everything is about to change.
A compelling and fascinating journey, Mongrels alternates between past and present to create an unforgettable portrait of a boy trying to understand his family and his place in a complex and unforgiving world. A smart and innovative story-- funny, bloody, raw, and real--told in a rhythmic voice full of heart, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, novel that illuminates the challenges and tender joys of a life beyond the ordinary in a bold and imaginative new way.
By: Shane Hawk (Editor), Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Editor), 2023, Paperback
Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.
These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.
Tamsyn Muir's New York Times and USA Today bestselling Locked Tomb Series continues with Nona ...the Ninth?
A Finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards!
An Indie Next Pick!
The Locked Tomb is a 2023 Hugo Finalist for Best Series!
“You will love Nona, and Nona loves you.” ―Alix E. Harrow
“Unlike anything I've ever read.” ―V.E. Schwab on Gideon the Ninth
“Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original.” ―The New York Times on Gideon the Ninth
Her city is under siege.
The zombies are coming back.
And all Nona wants is a birthday party.
In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona's not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger's body, and she's afraid she might have to give it back.
The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.
And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face...
An anthology of original horror stories edited by Bram Stoker Award® winners Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason that showcases authors from historically excluded backgrounds telling terrifying tales of what it means to be, or merely to seem, "other."
Offering new stories from some of the biggest names in horror as well as some of the hottest up-and-coming talents, Other Terrors will provide the ultimate reading experience for horror fans who want to examine fear of "the other."
Be they of a different culture, a different background, a different sexual orientation or gender identity, a different belief system, or a different skin color, some people simply aren't part of the community's majority—and are perceived as scary. Humans are almost instinctively inclined to fear what's different, and there are a multitude of individuals who have spent far too long on the outside looking in. And the thing about the outside is . . . it's much larger than you think.
In Other Terrors, horror writers from a multitude of underrepresented backgrounds have created stories of everyday people, places, and things where something shifts, striking a deeper, much more primal, chord of fear. Are our eyes playing tricks on us, or is there something truly sinister lurking under the surface of what we thought we knew? And who among us is really the other, after all?
CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, S.A. Cosby, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Michael Thomas Ford, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Christina Sng, Denise Dumars, Usman T. Malik, Annie Neugebauer, Gabino Iglesias, Hailey Piper, Nathan Carson, Shanna Heath, Tracy Cross, Linda D. Addison, Maxwell I. Gold, Larissa Glasser, Eugen Bacon, Holly Lyn Walrath, Jonathan Lees, M. E. Bronstein, Michael H. Hanson
By: Mariana Enriquez (Author), Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Illustrator), Megan McDowell (Translator), Paperback, 2023
“A masterpiece of supernatural horror.”—The Washington Post
“An enchanting, shattering, once-in-a-lifetime reading experience.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
ONE OF TIME AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S TEN BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK
A woman’s mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family in the first novel to be translated into English by the International Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed—“the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time” (Kazuo Ishiguro).
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Book Riot, PopSugar, The New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, Tordotcom, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Commonweal, CrimeReads
“A magnificent accomplishment.”—Alan Moore, author of Watchmen
“A masterpiece of literary horror.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“One of Latin America’s most exciting authors.”—Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”
(Verso Fiction)
"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.”
—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery
Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.
This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.
“A delectable brew of gothic horror and Hollywood satire . . . deliciously ghoulish.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post
Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.
Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer Merritt Emmons publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.
A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period-inspired illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.
A TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2021
A New York Times Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2021
The Stonewall Book Award winner of 2022
Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly and more!
A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction.
Vern―seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised―flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past and, more troublingly, the future―outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering not only the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history of America that produced it.
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals but entire nations. This is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.
RECOMMENDED BY GILLIAN FLYNN ON THE TODAY SHOW • “A lush, seductive Southern Gothic that’s deliciously queer . . . K. L. Cerra’s gift for gorgeous, gruesome atmosphere had me spellbound.”—Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn
A woman investigating her brother’s apparent suicide finds herself falling for her prime suspect—his darkly mysterious girlfriend—in this “creepy, compelling, and utterly original” (Karen Dionne) thriller.
“Get it out of me.”
It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in the lavish Savannah townhouse of his girlfriend, Maura. Police ruled his death a suicide sparked by psychosis, but Holly can’t shake the idea that something else must have happened—something involving another message he sent earlier that night about a “game” Maura wanted to play.
Determined to discover the truth, Holly begins to stalk Maura, a magnetic, black-eyed florist with a penchant for carnivorous plants. But what begins as an investigation quickly veers into a fixation that lures Holly into the depths of Maura’s world: Savannah high society, eerie black roses, and a whisper of something more sinister. Soon Holly is feeling a dark attraction to the one woman she shouldn’t trust. As Holly falls deeper for Maura and her secrets, she’s left with only one choice: find out what happened to Dane or meet the same fate.
Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost.
Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him.
As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble.
And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall.
Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is a dark, unflinching haunted house story that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors through the lens of the modern-day trans experience.
“Alison is like the twisted daughter of Clive Barker and Shirley Jackson. Tell Me I’m Worthless is an intense read full of shocks and buckets of gore. It’s brilliant.” ―Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author
A Best Horror Book of the Year (Esquire, Book Riot, ) • A Most Anticipated Book of the Year (CrimeReads, Vulture, Goodreads, Paste)
“A triumph of transgressive queer horror.” ―Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep.
Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.
Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.
Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a vital work of trans fiction that examines the devastating effects of trauma and how fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.
“Easily one of the strongest horror debuts in recent memory.” ―Booklist, STARRED review
Also by Alison Rumfitt:
Brainwyrms
By: Micah House (Author), 2024, Paperback
The Blanchard family were left devastated by the events they faced in THE HOUSE OF DUQUESNE. The losses the family suffered have taken months to come to terms with, but now they are settling into their new normal.
In this fifth novel of THE BLANCHARD WITCHES series...the Blanchard family may be absent a few faces, but their indomitable family love is carrying them through. Unfortunately, stretches of peace never last too long for these valiant witches. A new (and somewhat inexperienced) enemy has plans to wipe out the entire Blanchard clan. And as if that is not trouble enough, one surviving foe from Duquesne House is still out there, biding his time to seek his revenge.
While Demitra holds down the home front, guiding her grieving family into brighter days, Artemis travels the country on the hunt for Seth and Yasmine, once beloved Blanchards, now turned fiendish vampires. Their daughter Hera has been changed forever by their abandonment, but her stepmother Miranda will do whatever she can to give Hera the stability and love she needs.
And the Blanchards have lived through too many inexplicable events to continue under the public radar. A reporter from a major news network is digging into the events of The House of Duquesne, and the mysteries of the Blanchard family. The walls between the natural and supernatural world is crumbling, and perhaps it is about time, for some of the Blanchard witches are HALF SICK of SHADOWS.
By: Micah House (Author), 2021, Paperback
Welcome back to Daihmler County, Alabama. Come sit on Blanchard House porch and visit a spell, but don't get too cozy. The Autumn leaves aren't the only things changing as more problems emerge for the Blanchard witches.
As the second novel in The Blanchard Witches series opens…Olympia's youngest daughter Nacaria (who has been cursed to the shadows for two decades) has been freed from her sentence, but she has not come home. As the family tries to figure out why, a rescue mission seems necessary. Olympia’s middle daughter, Demitra, has mourned her late husband for years. Now she has a new beau, but her sister Artemis is suspicious of him. Is he who he says he is or is he up to something? And Fable is continuing to conceal her secret pregnancy not knowing what the family will do if they discover her baby was fathered by the werewolf they recently destroyed.
While the love that fills Blanchard House may be magical, that love will be tested as secrets are revealed and a deadly enemy must be faced down. Not everyone will make it out alive as the prodigal daughters come home.
By: Micah House, 2021, Paperback
Things are not always easy for the Blanchard family of Daihmler, Alabama. Over the last few years they've experienced more than their share of tribulations, even for a family of witches. Through the many ups and downs they have always had each other, but that was threatened at the end of Book Two as one of their own suddenly disappeared from a family cookout.
In the third novel of The Blanchard Witches series, the story picks up where PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS left off. The family is shocked to have just witnessed one of their own disappear right before their eyes, but there is little time to react as more Blanchard vanish from existence. Those who remain must search the past to find their loved ones. They will encounter relatives they have only heard about through family lore while facing delicate challenges in unfamiliar worlds. And someone will make a mistake which will alter the future of the Blanchard family forever.
You don’t want to miss this one! It’s when everything changes. Join the Blanchard as they face one of the greatest foes they've come up against...time.
A mysterious figure. A dead televangelist. A series of bizarre rituals.
Margo has spent most of her life without a family, and with a telekinetic gift she can't quite explain. Since losing her mother less than a year ago, she's felt more alone than ever. When her fiancé Sam takes her to his remote Iowa hometown to meet his family and begin planning their wedding, Margo finally begins to feel like she's home. But the feeling doesn't last long, and Margo soon feels out of place among her future in-laws. Sam's family is different from what she'd expected. Not only is their obsession with a deceased televangelist unsettling, but Margo has begun seeing a strange, mysterious figure from her past—a figure that she thought was put to rest with her mother's passing.
As Sam's family begins to take over the wedding plans, Margo tries to regain some control by turning to the town's sole wedding planner, who soon becomes her only confidant, perhaps because she reminds Margo of her former love. But the more Margo tries to distance her past from her future with Sam, the deeper his family pulls her in, forcing upon her generationally archaic traditions that border on ritualistic. As Margo unearths the family's dark web of secrets, she begins to suspect that she may have been brought here for a reason, and it may cost her her life.
In the psychologically unsettling vein of I'm Thinking of Ending Things and The Women in the Dark, combined with the socially aware suspense of Get Out, The Ever End takes elevated horror to a new level with a queer, twisted, feminist story that will keep readers guessing until the end, and stay with them long after that.