The Season of Scares is Upon Us!

Oh my god I can’t believe that this book is finally almost here. I can’t wait to put this monstrous, gorgeous book in my eyeballs. It’s peak Gothic goodness and, surprising absolutely no one, I am living for it. When Jane Shoringfield makes a calculated choice to marry a stranger to ensure her security and independence, wooooow does she bet on the wrong horse. I mean sure, Augustine Lawrence seems like the perfect choice. He’s wealthy, he’s charming, and best of all, he’s a recluse who doesn’t even want her to set foot in his house. What could be better? Until Jane ends up stranded on his doorstep on their wedding night and what she finds inside Lindridge Hall throws all her careful planning into disarray. So much for best laid plans, because there is something very, very wrong in Lindridge Hall.

I honestly don’t know if we can get more “perfect Halloween read” than Cackle, folks. I have been counting down the days until October when this book and it’s gorgeous cover would be released upon the world. Tired of her ordinary, safe life in Manhattan, Annie abandons everything in exchange for a teaching position in a small village in upstate New York, a picturesque town almost too good to be true! Even her apartment is Instagram ready – except of course for the spiders. Still, even a persistent eight-legged infestation can’t put a damper on what looks like a shining start to her new life. Especially once Annie meets beautiful, charming, and independent Sophie, who wants to help Annie to finally start living her life. If the townsfolk seem a little frightened of Sophie, so what? It’s not like witches are real. Right?

Can I offer you some (more) queer horror in this trying time? This new YA horror by Aden Polydoros takes place in 1893 Chicago during the illustrious World’s Fair. But while most of the city is caught up in the glitter and whirl of the fair, Alter Rosen is hunting a killer. Alter came to America to make a better life for himself, and a future for his mother and sisters still living in Romania. But the violent murders of several young Jewish men, the most recent of which was Alter’s best friend Yakov, have brought Alter’s American dream to a halt. Now Yakov’s dybbuk is possessing Alter, threatening his very existence, and leaving Alter no choice but to team up with a dangerous boy from his past and find the killer before the killer finds him first. Or Yakov’s dybbuk takes him over entirely.

This novella, people. It’s so full of rot, and mold, and gore! A perfect, weird, delightfully horrifying ghost story. When a group of friends descends upon an abandoned, reputedly haunted Heian-era mansion for a wedding, things quickly go sideways when a scary story told in a dark room resurrects the vengeful spirit of the house. My favorite part of this was definitely Khaw’s descriptions of the house as just seething with rot, as though the whole thing were a decomposing corpse in its own right. If you love watching groups of people crumble as external terrors expose and put pressure on the cracks between them, you’re going to love Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

Rocklyn’s forthcoming post-apocalyptic cosmic horror novella is one of those books that really sticks to you after you put it down. It’s gorgeous – and definitely a bit gross in places (but in the best horror way, of course) – and the amount of worldbuilding that Rocklyn fit into 112 pages puts some 300 pages novels I’ve read to shame. Survivors of a flooded land exist in isolation, fighting for their continued survival on an ark. Supplies are dwindling, terrifying sea monsters circle, and Iraxi, locked away deep in the hold of the ark, is heavily pregnant with a child she does not want. A child that may not even be human. In a society in which Iraxi’s people are reviled, but her ability to bear a child when so many others cannot is revered, she straddles a strange line between outcast and idol. But there may be an even darker and more powerful fate awaiting her.

Be still my Brontë loving heart. Within These Wicked Walls is Gothic, it’s creepy, it’s romantic, so of course I enjoyed every minute of it. I mean I’m a simple girl. Give me a room full of blood and I’m content. Jane Eyre fans will recognize a few beloved lines and familiar scenes, but even when paying homage to her source text, Blackwood has created something wholly original and unique. Andromeda is a debtera without a license, making her little better than an eternal apprentice in the eyes of the world. If she wants to continue to work, she’s going to need a patron. So when Magnus Rochester hires her sight unseen to cleanse his house of the Evil Eye, despite her lack of licensure, Andromeda decides to take her one chance at a future and run with it. But she could never have predicted the degree of horror lurking inside of Magnus’ home, nor the youth and charm of her new employer. With both her life and heart in danger, Andromeda will have to work fast if she hopes to save Magnus from the curse that threatens to tear them apart.

I have been absolutely DYING to talk to you about this book. For real. I had to put a big old moratorium on it in my head so that I wouldn’t write about it too soon and risk being run out of town for spoiling a genuinely upsetting reveal that had me gasping out loud. Sophia knows nothing but the reality of her perfect, sheltered, beloved life behind the safe walls of Arcadia Gardens. Her husband is her whole world. She was made to be his little darling, and she’s never once questioned that. That is, until the perfection of her life begins to crack around the edges, letting in a strangeness that just might lead her to the truth behind the only life she’s ever known. A truth perhaps lurking in the locked basement of their home, where Sophia is never, ever to go.