For more about the books pictured above, here are blurbs and lkinks to my reviews for buy links and all that:
- A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
- Dracula’s brides retelling in which they fall in love bisexually and vampirically yeet their abuser
- The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller
- Taking place in the city of Hudson, this horror has gentrification, Grinder tulpas, ghosts, gay disasters, and more
- Ibitsu by Haruto Ryo
- An urban legend about a young Gothic lolita girl in the trash in search of a sibling has deadly consequences. Absolutely horrifying, especially as shit escalates
- Lakewood by Megan Giddings
- To save her family from dire financial straits, Lena takes a job that looks great on paper but involves a lot of questionable medical research
- The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
- Marriage of convenience turns spooky as a new wife spends the night in her husband’s literal haunted mansion; chaos magic ensues
- Near the Bone by Christina Henry
- Marriage of convenience turns spooky as a new wife spends the night in her husband’s literal haunted mansion; chaos magic ensues
- The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
- Being one of the only Black kids at a prep school is hard enough. Being haunted by the ghost of a mass shooter doesn’t help
- The Troop by Nick Cutter
- Campfire stories & camping have a certain charm. But when a bioengineered rot terror shows up, things only get grosser and more thrilling from there
- The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
- A literary horror about a young couple buying their first home together–and it’s haunted. Terror ensues.
- Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
- Dark historical fantasy in which the KKK turn into eldritch horrors and the only thing standing between them and Armageddon is a girl with a magic sword
- The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
- Childhood friends got greedy on a hunting trip and now, as adults, they’re haunted and hunted by a a mysterious elk woman
- Boogiepop and Others by Kouhei Kadono & Kouji Ogata
- This light novel is about high schoolers disappearing only to reappear as the titular phantom or their enemy, the Manticore. Spooky and unsettling
- Small Spaces series by Katherine Arden
- Ollie, Coco, and Brian are haunted by an entity known as the Smiling Man in a series of adventures perfect for fans of Over the Garden Wall
- Dai Dark by Q Hayashida
- Zaha Sanko and his back paggy Avakian are constantly on the run from aliens who want to use Sanko’s bones to grant wishes. Perfect for people seeking to scratch that Gideon the Ninth itch
- The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
- Get your queer ace/aro werewolf fix here. After killing the wrong nun, Skythulf has to redeem himself by joining the Wild Hunt. Metal af with awesome illustrations
- The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
- In which cleaning up your grandmother’s home reveals more secrets than you cared to know & makes rocks fucking terrifying
- The Hunger by Alma Katsu
- One of my faves? One of my absolute faves. Character-driven retelling of the Donner Party tragedy horror
- Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard of by Harold Schechter
- Greatest crash course in almost every fucked up thing with incredible organization according to timeframe
- Mieruko-Chan by Tomoki Izumi
- A slice of life comedy manga in which the main character sees some of the scariest ghosts I’ve seen in any piece of art
- Butcherbird by Cassie Hart
- Local woman goes back to clear out family farmhouse that is totes haunted and the family secrets might be even scarier
- Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
- In which a mother is having a hard time with her obstinate child, but we also get the kid’s terrifying point of view
- The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
- When Nella is no longer the only Black girl at the publishing house, conspiracy threatens to unravel the fabric of reality itself
- A Monstrous Love by Magen Cubed
- A collection for those who like stories in which girls kiss and one of them may or may not be a literal monster
- A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
- It’s eat, pray, love, but more like love and eat the prey as a food critic recounts her more unsavory tastes
- Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus
- A teen girl is seriously fucked up from her father’s encounter of the alien kind, but there is so much more to it than that
- Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur
- A particle physicist in the Antarctic is haunted not only by a literal ghost but also doomed to become one of the women from her mother’s folk tales
- Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
- In which Andrew is haunted by his best friend Eddie’s ghost and that supposed suicide spirals into mysteries of the dark academic variety
- The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers by Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, and Ben Kissel
- Nonfiction & illustrated, serial killer heavy hitters galore
- Pan by Christopher Ruz
- This retelling casts Peter Pan as the villain and has lived rent-free in my head ever since I read it
- Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
- A group of friends spend the night in a blood-thirsty haunted mansion and it ends poorly
- The Bloodborne comic by Ales Kot and Piotr Kowalski
- The unsettling joy of Bloodborne fully illustrated. Mind-bending and terrifying
Jo Writes Fantasy 