Author: Jessica Avery

I read the original Carmilla for the first time last year and absolutely loved it, so obviously I was over the moon when I found Amy Chu and Soo Lee’s new graphic novel inspired by Le Fanu’s novella. Chu and Lee’s adaptation is set in New York in the ’90’s during the Lunar New Year, and blends elements of Le Fanu’s Carmilla with Chinese folklore to tell a story of murder, infatuation, and deadly secrets. Athena is a social worker on the trail of a murderer who’s been killing homeless LGBTQ+ women in the city. The murderer’s trail leads her to a nightclub called Camilla’s in her own neighborhood with a mysterious reputation, and Athena soon finds herself falling for a beautiful young woman named Violet who may just be the killer’s next victim.

Gosh, the synopsis of The Fell of Dark is giving me nostalgic, Buffy-esque feels, and I love it — vampires, a hellmouth nexus of mystical energy, a little bit of apocalypse flair for flavor. Ah, memories. But something tells me I’m having more fun with this than August, who hated living in a vampire town even before some random undead guy rolled up with a cryptic warning about the end of the world. And yeah, the guy’s hot. And mysterious, which arguably makes him even more hot. But he’s just dropped Auggie into the middle of a nightmarish scenario where some old and deadly power is threatening to destroy the world unless Auggie can find some way to stop it. And he may be the only one who can.

Okay, so this is where I have to pull my “if it’s vampire, it’s technically horror” get out of jail free card and give it a wave, because Dead Collections is not horror in the frightening sense. It is, in fact, more of a fantasy novel with a central love story and an undead/paranormal twist. But I’m including it anyway! If you want to argue about it, you can find me on Twitter, as long as Twitter still exists by the time this newsletter reaches you. Or you could take my word for it when I say that this novel about a trans archivist vampire named Sol falling in love with a widow named Elsie is a beautiful story about navigating grief, hate, and stigma to find love and joy in a world that seems fundamentally opposed to letting you have either. And yes, it’s a different kind of vampire story than the other two on this list, but an extremely important one given current events.

Also, there’s ghosts.

Yes, I’m talking about Leech again. No, I’m not apologizing because I love this book so much and I want everyone to read it. Leech is a queer medical Gothic horror novel set in a fictional Northern town locked in the depths of a terrible winter that keeps the residents trapped in their homes out of fear of the deadly cold. In the estate that overlooks the town, the house doctor has died violently by his own hand, and it’s up to the newly arrived Doctor, a member of the Institute just like the deceased, to discover the cause. In fact, all of the bodies of the Interprovincial Medical Institute are doctors, because for centuries the Institute has been systematically replacing all the unreliable human doctors with its superior bodies, whose mind(s) can overcome any challenge or puzzle the Institute might encounter. Until they can’t. Because the parasitic creature that our Doctor discovers lurking in the cold might finally be a problem beyond the Institute’s ability to solve.

Inspired by the story of Henrietta Lacks and a long and terrible history of medical experimentation on Black bodies, Lakewood begins with death and debt. Lena drops out of college after her grandmother dies in a bid to help support her family as they navigate the debts revealed by her grandmother’s passing. When a high paying job opens up in the little, isolated town of Lakewood, Michigan, promising not only a place to live but also full coverage of medical expenses, the offer is too good to refuse. The only catch? Lena can never tell anyone, friend or family, about the strange experiments she’s being paid to undergo. She’s been told that the work being done at Lakewood could have massive, positive impacts on the world. But the longer the testing goes on, and the risks of participation increase, Lena will have to make a choice between her family’s financial security and her own life.

Dana Schwartz’s Anatomy is a YA historical medical horror novel with a Frankenstein twist. A bit of gothic romance, a whole heap of body horror, and piles of dead bodies. What’s not to love? Hazel Sinnett’s only desire in life is to be a surgeon, healing bodies and maybe even finding a cure for the terrible Roman Plague that claimed her older brother’s life. She will do whatever it takes to overcome the barriers in her way, even dressing as a boy in order to attend classes on anatomy. When her ruse is discovered, however, Hazel finds herself thrown out of the classroom, leaving her no choice but to continue her studies of the human body in private. By any means necessary.

Haunted House books come in an array of “flavors,” from the chillingly Gothic, to the gruesome and gory, to outright skin crawling terror. And when it comes to creepy and generally upsetting (complimentary), The Grip of It really delivers. With short chapters that drive up the tension, and a dual narrative split between our two leads, this book will leave you wishing you’d turned on an extra light before you started reading. In The Grip of It, Julie and James, who flee city life in an attempt to save their dysfunctional marriage, end up settling in a house in the country. But what was supposed to be a fresh start for the troubled couple soon turns into a nightmare. As the house seems to warp and decay before their eyes, Julie and James rush to discover its sinister history before they become trapped within its walls forever.

Victor LaValle’s The Changeling — which is actually being adapted into a series by Apple TV+! — is already pretty well known to most of the horror community, I know. But it’s an excellent, eerie book, and always worth revisiting. It’s about a couple, Apollo and Emma, who have recently become parents. Apollo is settling into his role as a father, determined to be a better parent to his child than his own father was to him. Emma, on the other hand, has stopped showing any interest in their baby at all, and what first appeared to be post-partum depression soon devolves into something far more concerning. When Emma does something terrible, then disappears, Apollo has no choice but to follow, beginning a journey in a strange and frightening world of secrets and living legends.

And last, but most certainly not least, on this week’s list is one of my absolute, hands down favorite short story collections of all time. Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties is made up of dark, beautiful, and fantastical stories that you won’t soon forget. So if you haven’t read it, yet I highly recommend adding it to your reading list. While some of the stories in the collection are more instantly recognizable as horror — like the infamous “The Husband Stitch” — others are more sad or sentimental, underlaid by the knowledge that something has gone terribly wrong. And they’re all fantastic. My personal favorite is still the soft sorrow of “Inventory,” in which the narrator makes an inventory of their lovers as the world around them collapses in the midst of a plague-driven apocalypse.

Tim McGregor’s Wasps in the Ice Cream is about as classic coming-of-age horror as you can get. It’s the summer of 1987, and Mark Prewit’s summer job at an ice cream stand may not be glamorous, but at least it keeps him out of the house and away from his dad’s new wife. But in a small town with nothing to do and nowhere to go, Mark and his friends find themselves bored, with too much time on their hands. Which is how Mark ends up pressured into participating in a malicious prank his friends play on the Farrow sisters. Guilty that he gave in to the immature impulses of friends he’s begun to outgrow, Mark tries to make it up to the sisters and ends up finding a new friend in middle sister George. Unfortunately, small town minds breed suspicion, and when Mark’s old friends find out that he’s been spending time with the witchy Farrows, they set out to punish the sisters for daring to try to rise above their outcast status..

One of my favorite kinds of coming-of-age stories is when the protagonist is raised in seclusion, where the outside world is concealed from them, if not outright lied about by the adults in their life. Finding out the truth is always inevitably painful, but there’s something so satisfying — as a reader — about watching a character finally realize what you’ve been cursed to know since page one: people are lying to them, and not for their own good. That’s definitely the case with Immanuelle and her childhood in Bethel. Among the pious, obedient people of the lands of Bethel, where the word of their Prophet is law, Immanuel is an outcast, viewed as an aberration despite her best attempts to submit and conform. When a mishap lands her in the terrifying Darkwood that surrounds Bethel — a place of witches, spirits, and evil — Immanuelle uncovers unexpected answers about her mother, and about the dark truth behind the Church of Bethel.

Growing up in a small town, it’s easy to get sucked into the idea that it’s an idyllic sanctuary where nothing bad ever happens, mostly because the bad things that happen there never happen to you. Logan Ortiz-Woodley lets herself be dragged to the remote, small town of Snakebite, Oregon, by her fathers Brandon and Alejo, but only reluctantly because the last thing she wants is to get caught up in one of their ghost hunts. What she doesn’t realize until after they arrive is that both men are originally from Snakebite, and have nearly as many secrets as the town itself. Secrets that might have something to do with the teens that have started disappearing. Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to disappear, and as tensions in the town mount, igniting old prejudices, and suspicion begins to fall on Logan’s fathers, the two girls join forces to find answers.

Mongrels is a coming-of-age story told through the figure of the werewolf — or rather through the figure of a boy who does not yet know for sure that he will even become a werewolf, or what being one will mean about where he belongs. Being on the run, constantly dodging the law, living with nothing — that’s the only life the boy has ever known, following his Aunt and Uncle hither and yon across the South. But the older he gets, the more he begins to wonder if that’s the life he’s really meant to live, or if there’s a better future for him somewhere else. If you’re looking for a coming-of-age story that’s full of heart, and focused on the protagonist’s journey to answer the two biggest questions that face us as we grow “Who am I? And where do I belong?” look no further.

As if Cicadas weren’t creepy enough all on their own! V. Castro’s The Queen of the Cicadas made my skin crawl with all its gory, “bugs in places they shouldn’t be” goodness. In 2018, Belinda Alvarez returns to south Texas to attend her best friends wedding at a picturesque farm that happens to the the site of an eerie urban legend: La Reina de Las Chicharras. The Queen of the Cicadas. A murdered farmworker in the 1950s made a deal with an Aztec goddess of death to live again and take her vengeance on those who hurt her and those who forgot her. Now, as the legend unfolds, Belinda finds that her life — and that of the farmhouse owner, Hector — is entwined with that of the murdered woman, Milagros. As the two become immersed in the past it becomes clear that Milagros’ fate may be theirs as well.

So I had, HAD to include this book on my list of bug-related horror, because Danforth included several horrifying yellow jacket-related scenes in her novel but there was one that absolute carved its own little spot in spot in my brain and just…it lives there now. I’ll never unknow the fear that I’ve secretly been chewing on dead yellow jackets. (Oh no, so crunchy.) Set in 1902, Plain Bad Heroines tells the linked stories of two sets of girls whose live are entwined in the history of a mysterious New England boarding school. There’s Flo and Clara, who were students at the school and died tragically, and over a century later, there’s Harper and Audrey, who are playing Flo and Clara in a horror film about their gruesome deaths and the supposedly haunted and cursed Gilded-Age school. When past and present get tangled up during filming, what is real and what is fiction becomes increasingly uncertain.

I’ve got an exciting forthcoming title for you to end our list of the squirmy, creepy, crawly horror titles: a whole anthology of bug horror! From Beyond Press is a new publisher and they are hitting the ground running with an anthology sure to fill your nightmares with skittering legs and far, far too many eyes. And if the allure of a whole anthology of bug-filled horror were is not enough to entice you to hit that pre-order button, the stories of This World Belongs to Us are written by some of the most exciting and talented voices in the horror community, including Cynthia Pelayo, V. Castro, Paula D. Ashe, Laurel Hightower, Bitter Karella, and many more! So grab a can of bug killer, just in case, and get ready to feel your skin crawl.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Does it get better than a queer retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I honestly don’t think it does. I am so excited for My Dear Henry to finally hit shelves. Everything Kalynn Bayron writes is a win, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m sure this is going to be no exception. Gabriel Utterson knows that something is wrong with his friend Henry Jekyll. Having finally returned to London after scandal imploded his and Henry’s lives two years ago, Gabriel is desperate to find out what has become of his friend and why Henry stopped writing to him. What he finds instead, is Hyde, the strange and charismatic young man who claims to be Henry’s new friend.

Also worth noting, My Dear Henry is actually part of a series of classic story retellings, the Remixed Classics series, which frequently features authors of color and queer retellings.

Raise your hand if you’re also super excited for a new Victor LaValle book! And a historical horror novel to boot! Set in the American West of the early 20th century, LaValle’s newest novel, Lone Women, is about a woman fleeing her past by taking up the government’s offer of free land in Montana to any homesteader to can settle and keep it. And Adelaide isn’t the only one. There are other “lone women” taking their chances on the Montana frontier, but not all of them have Adelaide’s secrets, like the massive steamer trunk that travels with her but which always remains locked. It was Adelaide’s secret that destroyed her family and drove her out of her hometown, but out in the wilds of Montana, it may well be her secret that will help her survive the hardships to come.

Where are my space horror fans? Because wow do I have a must-read book for you. Nightfire has blessed us once again with nightmares from the depths of space! Ness Brown’s novella, The Scourge Between Stars, is a bit of a flip on the sci-fi narrative of colonists going forth to seek the stars (and often finding horrors instead) in that it’s actually about what happens after the long dreamed-of colony has failed. Jacklyn Albright is the acting captain of the Calypso, a starship containing all that remains of humanity. The Calypso is making its way back to Earth after the catastrophic failure of the colony that was supposed to set humanity’s future among the stars. And if the lack of food and the dangers of the crushing void of space around them weren’t bad enough, Jacklyn has reason to suspect that there is something alive onboard her ship that shouldn’t be there — an intruder that might kill them all before they ever make it home.

After how much I loved Tirado’s Burn Down, Rise Up last year, any new books of theirs are always going straight onto my to-buy list, and that definitely includes We Don’t Swim Here. In Hillwoods, nobody goes in the water. Not in pools, not in lakes. No swimming period. Which is unfortunate, because Bronwyn is stuck in the tiny rural town for a year while her father gets her grandmother’s affairs in order, and there’s not much else to do. Everyone is so weird and secretive, all they’ll tell her is “don’t go in the water” but no one will tell her why. Anais, meanwhile, just wants Bronwyn to stop asking why when it comes to Hillwoods. It’s the only way to guarantee that the new girl will be safe from the town’s notice. Anais grew up in Hillwoods, and she has her own means of protecting herself from the town’s secrets. But Anais won’t be able to protect Bronwyn if she can’t keep her from trying to discover the truth about Hillwood’s painful history.

I just couldn’t, in good conscience, make a list about romance in horror without including the absolute gem of a vagina monster book that is Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper. I actually wasn’t aware that there was a bit of a love story at the heart of Queen of Teeth, so I was delightfully surprised the first time I read it. I’d even go so far to argue — subjectively — that it has a happy ending! (It all depends on how you look at it.) Queen of Teeth is about Yaya Betancourt, who discovers that she has spouted teeth in her vagina. Yaya assumes it’s a side effect of a pharmaceutically induced genetic condition that she and thousands of others developed in the womb with a little help from AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical. Whoops. But when she realizes that ABP is determined to hunt her down because of her mutation, Yaya has to consider the possibility that there may be another, darker motive behind the company’s pursuit.

The love story in Echo is one of my favorites, to be honest, even though it breaks my heart. If you’re looking for an “all’s well that ends well” bit of romance in your horror this Valentine’s Day, maybe save this one for later. But even when it hurts, this book is so good. I desperately need more queer horror love stories like this in my life. Echo is about Nick Grever surviving a terrible mountaineering accident that left him horribly scarred, killed his climbing buddy, Augustin, and left him figuratively and literally haunted by the mysterious mountain, Maudit. But Echo is also about Nick’s boyfriend Sam. It’s about their relationship, their past, and their horrifying present as Sam tries desperately to save Nick from the mountain intent on possessing him.

What’s a list of romance plots in horror without at least one ill-fated Gothic love story? And they don’t get much more ill-fated than thinking that you’re going to live happily ever after with a blood-drinking countess. But in Marion’s defense, even I was in love with Lisavet by the time things got… messy. Looking for a way out of the city and out of the poverty she was born into, Marion Shaw answers a newspaper listing to be a bloodmaid in the House of Hunger. The House of Hunger is perhaps the most infamous of the noble houses in the North, presided over by the seductive and beautiful Countess Lisavet, and if Marion does her job well, she’ll be set for life. Bloodmaids who have aged out retire in luxury, everyone knows that. So, when the beautiful but fearsome Lisavet fixes her eye on Marion, it certainly seems that Marion’s fortunes are on the rise. But a string of disappearing bloodmaids throws her new life into chaos and if Marion can’t discover the truth, she may soon find herself numbered among the missing.

Proms are supposed to be fun, right? Fancy dresses, one last hurrah before graduation, all that high school jazz. But wow, the horror genre just does NOT agree! We have a whole tradition of stories best referred to as “proms you definitely don’t want to attend.” And Tiffany D. Jackson’s retelling of Carrie is a brilliant new addition to that long, violent, frequently bloody history. So hold on to your plastic tiaras, folks! Madison has been passing for white her whole life, on the insistence of her abusive father. But when she is revealed to be biracial, the bullying that normally plagues Maddy’s high school existence goes from bad to worse. The ensuing public fallout of a bullying video gone viral has the student body scrambling to repair their school’s reputation, but their plan for an integrated prom won’t be the solution they expect it to be. Not when Maddy’s classmates have decided that she still has to pay for her lies. Not when Maddy still has one secret left to to hide.

Ophie’s Ghosts is a middle grade historical horror book about grief, and how our lives — and maybe even our afterlives — can be haunted by the things we’ve done or the things that were done to us. Ophie and her mother lost every thing in a single night in November 1922. The night Ophie’s father died, and Ophie learned that she had the ability to see ghosts moving through the world around her. After that night, Ophie’s mother moved them to Pittsburgh and got Ophie a job working with her in a creepy old manor house. Like many old houses, Daffodil Manor is (un)alive with the ghosts of its long and not always happy history. As Ophie gets to know the ghosts, and even befriends one, she begins to realize that her gift might actually let her help the ghosts of Daffodil Manor. But houses that old don’t just have ghosts, they also have secrets, and those secrets may run deeper than Ophie knows.

Megan Giddings is the author of hard hitting social horror books, and her newest is only further testament to her skill. An innovative variation on witchcraft and magic, The Women Could Fly is about a future in which witches are real, and the State will do anything it can to stop them. Any woman is susceptible to becoming a witch, which means that every woman has to be meticulously controlled. Women are “encouraged” to marry by age 30 and put themselves in the care of a husband who can “help” them stay good. At 28, as a Black women and the daughter of a suspected witch, Jo is already feeling the pressure to conform to the State’s demands when a new version of her missing mother’s will suddenly comes to light. What it asks of Jo is strange, and will likely subject her to even closer scrutiny from the State, but Jo will have to risk being declared a witch if she wants to find out what really happened to her mother.

If you prefer your horror with a side of humor, you should definitely be reading Lily Anderson. She married the two perfectly in Undead Girl Gang, and came back for another round with her 2022 book. Scout’s Honor is about an organization called the Ladybird Scouts, who disguise themselves as a proper ladies’ society when in fact they’re trained monster hunters sworn to protect humanity. Prue is a legacy Scout, descended form a long family history of hunters. Their prey? Mulligrubs — weird inter-dimensional parasitic monsters who feast on human emotion. Prue walked away from the Scouts when her best friend was killed in a hunt, and she has no intention of returning, but monster slayer is in her blood, and when a heist-esque plan to infiltrate the Ladybirds goes seriously sideways, she finds herself left with only one choice: in order to save her town and everyone she loves, she’ll finally have to confront that past she’s been running from for three long years.

I mean, how could I even try to talk about 2016 and leave out what is, to this day, one of my favorite horror books. My Best Friends Exorcism was the first of Hendrix’s books that I read, and he has definitely become an instant-buy author for me in the years since. This book is gross, hilarious, nostalgic, and just fantastic. Abby and Gretchen are best friends, and have been since they were little kids. Until, that is, a strange acid-induced incident the summer before their junior year throws their friendship into jeopardy. No one really knows what happened to Gretchen that night in the woods, not even Abby. But when Gretchen’s behavior beings to change, becoming increasingly frightening and violent, Abby is forced to accept the one possible explanation that presents itself: Gretchen is possessed.

Book one of Zoraida Córdovas’ Brooklyn Brujas series also came out in 2016! A bit horror, a bit fantasy, Labyrinth Lost is about a young bruja named Alex who hates magic, even though her immense abilities mean that she’s the most powerful witch of her generation. Determined to rid herself of her magic, Alex performs one final spell to banish her power forever. Something goes horribly wrong, and before Alex can end the spell, her whole family vanishes. The only person left standing when the dust settles is a brujo called Nova, who’s the last person she would trust to help her. But if Alex wants to fix her mistake and rescue her family from Los Lagos — the strange land to which she accidentally banished them — she has no choice but to follow Nova out of her world and into the dark in-between.

I’m so glad to get to include a graphic novel pick this month! This last year has really given me a new appreciation for graphic novels. An alternative history story that merges horror and steampunk fantasy in a matriarchal 1900’s Asia, Monstress is one of those graphic novels that is as beautiful as it is captivatingly written. Sana Takeda’s art is breathtaking and I can’t wait to see more of it. Monstress is about a girl struggling through the midst of a war. The key to her survival may rest in the mysterious psychic connection she shares with a powerful monster. But only if together they can evade the forces that would use that connection against them.