Everything’s Haunted, Evil, or Clowns, and I love It: More 2023 Horror Books by Black Authors

Bookish Goods

Did Not Finish Headstone Sticker by MySecretCopy

So I actually have a number of MySecretCopy’s stickers and magnets all over my TBR carts, including this delightful reminder that if a book is not working for you then there’s no shame in throwing it in the DNF graveyard. Life is too short, and there are so many books waiting to be read, so bury those unfinished books with the bodies of your enemies and go find something new to read! (And be sure to check out the rest of MySecretCopy’s shop for other sticky or magnetic goodies!)

New Releases

Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury

Set in an isolated mansion in northern Ontario, Delicious Monsters is about two girls whose lives, though lived a decade apart, follow frightening similar paths. Daisy can see the dead, and in her home city of Toronto, the dead are everywhere. Which is why she’s eager to escape for the summer when her mother suddenly inherits the mansion where she used to spend her own summers. But big old houses are often full of big old secrets, and the secrets in this house may be more than Daisy bargained for. Ten years later, Brittney is inseparably tied to the same house by her mother’s experiences there. Experiences that Brittney is sure were fabricated — nothing but lies that she can finally expose. But as she sets out to unravel the house’s secrets, she finds herself investigating the story of a girl very like herself. It’s a story that ended badly, and one that may be leading Brittney towards an equally tragic fate.

She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

Apparently the theme of this week’s new releases is: big houses are full of secrets and will eat you if they can. Because in Tran’s She is a Haunting, Jade also finds herself trapped within a strange old house full of ghosts and nightmares. When she agreed to return to Vietnam to visit with her estranged father, Jade thought the hardest part of her trip would be pretending to enjoy herself, while simultaneously doing her best to convince her father that she deserves the college funds he promised her. Just five weeks inside the French colonial house he’s restoring and she’ll walk away with her education funded. But there’s something undeniably wrong with the house — the strange noises, the alarming number of creepy bugs that seem to be everywhere, the beautiful ghost that keeps trying to warn Jade not to eat — even if her father and her sister don’t seem to see it. If Jade wants to keep the house from devouring her family, she’ll have to dig into the house’s dark foundations and bring all its secrets to light.

For a more comprehensive list, check out our New Books newsletter!

Riot Recommendations

There’s No Way I’d Die First by Lisa Springer (September 5)

I have such a love/hate relationship when it comes to killer clowns. On the one hand, they’re a classic! On the other: big yikes. When Noelle Layne uses her horror movie expertise to throw the biggest, most exclusive Halloween bash for her senior class, she expects the night to go down in history as one of the best parties of her high school career. Not one of the most deadly. That is, until the knock-off creepy clown that she hired puts an axe in one of her guests, and a serious wrinkle in her party plans. As the night descends into terror, Noelle will have to rely on everything she’s learned from a lifetime of watching horror movies if she want’s to be the Final Girl in her own personal slasher film.

Monstrous by Jessica Lewis (September 12)

Nothing says small town secrets like being the new girl who gets sacrificed to the ancient monster that lives in the woods. Ah. Summer memories. Though maybe not the kind that Latavia thought she was going to be making when she was forced to spend the summer in Sanctum, Alabama with her aunt. This creepy little town is full of mysteries and suspicious locals who treat Latavia with a weird hostility reserved for outsiders, and the rules that Latavia’s aunt gave her the minute she arrived in Sanctum are even weirder. But when Latavia is suddenly dragged out of her bed and into the Red Wood one night, to be sacrificed to the beast that resides there, it quickly becomes clear why her aunt was so afraid. Faced with a choice — be eaten or risk becoming a monster herself — Latavia will do what it takes to survive, no matter how terrible the cost.

The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson (October 3)

Another accidental theme for this week is “well, that forest is spectacularly fucked up,” apparently, because there’s something really old and really hungry living in the forest outside Regent Academy. It’s a creature with a 400 year old blood debt that it intends to call due, and if the citizens of Winslow, Vermont don’t pay up, they’ll suffer the consequences. All of which Douglas stumbles upon by accident, while investigating the death of a fellow student at Regent Academy. No one even seems to remember that the murdered student existed or was ever one of their peers except for Douglas and one other boy. Determined to understand what’s happening inside Regent, Douglas begins to dig into Winslow’s dark history and uncovers centuries of dangerous secrets.

All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology ed. by Circe Moskowitz (October 17)

By now you all know how much I love anthologies, so obviously I’m beyond excited for the publication of All These Sunken Souls this october. Several of the contributors’ names will look familiar from past Fright Stuff newsletters and even from this two-part list that we’re concluding today, including Kalynn Bayron, Donyae Coles, Dyan Douglass, and Liselle Sambury among other talented authors. The stories in All These Sunken Souls explore a range of horrific tropes and subjects, from haunted houses to monsters to zombies and more, promising nightmares a plenty for its readers.

As always, you can catch me on twitter at @JtheBookworm, where I try to keep up on all that’s new and frightening.