Author: Jessica Avery

The first of our March releases is a book that I had the opportunity to read back in February, so I can tell you with complete honestly that I loved this weird, creepy, queer Lovecraft-inspired YA horror. Adelle and Connie are best friends and co-super fans of an obscure gothic romance novel called Moira. So much so that, when offered the opportunity to be transported into the novel and experience the world of Moira for themselves, they decide to take the chance. But inside the pages of Moira, things have gone terribly wrong. Instead of a lush Gothic setting, dripping with romance and velvet, the two girls find themselves surrounded by horrors, entangled with the book’s characters in a desperate bid to save the World of Moira and themselves.

I finished The Shadow Glass a few days ago and I’m still riding that sweet sweet emotional high. If you are a fan of 80’s fantasy films (think The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, Willow, etc.) you’re going to love The Shadow Glass. Yes it’s probably a bit more fantasy than horror, but it’s dark and delightfully gory. There were times I definitely was like “oooooh that’s not right”, which is always a good sign. It’s a fondly nostalgic riff on a familiar story, exploring the necessity of growing up in a world that isn’t kind to dreamers. It’s about grief, and loss, forgiveness and finding yourself – and I know that sounds a bit heavy but I promise there’s also plenty of killer puppets and humor to keep the story balanced. Jack grew up enraptured by his father Bob Corman’s critical flop turned cult puppet fantasy film: The Shadow Glass. Estranged from his father, it’s only after Bob’s death that Jack, reluctantly, returns to his strange, mouldering childhood home and the memories he buried there. When the creatures that populated his father’s film and Jack’s childhood adventures suddenly come to life and insist that they need Jack’s help in saving their world, he finds himself catapulted into an impossible adventure to save both the fictional world of Iri and the modern world from certain destruction.

Okay, so like The Shadow Glass, The City of Dusk leans more on the dark fantasy side of things than the horror side of things. But you know I can’t say no to creepy bone magic. I’m weak for a hint of necromancy. I see bones, my brain says “horror”. Thrown in some vengeful gods, some body horror, and honestly I’m not going to scrutinize the genre lines too closely. Be forewarned, The City of Dusk is definitely a work of epic fantasy, and there is going to be a lot going on in this first book of the trilogy. Lots of realms (four technically) lots of divinely gifted heirs (also four, actually) and a whole lot of uneasy teamwork trust as they join together to keep their kingdom from being consumed by war. Add into that mess the fact that each heir is also tied to the god of their realm, and attempting to save a world the gods have abandoned is tantamount to apostasy, and it seems unlikely things will end well for our would-be apostates. But the grim portents are half the fun, right?

Survive the Dome is a sci-fi thriller with a healthy dose of dark dystopia thrown in for good measure. It’s about a young, aspiring journalist, Jamal Lawson, who travels to Baltimore to document a protest against police brutality. But before the protest can begin, the city is encased in something that authorities are calling the Dome: a brutal countermeasure meant to suppress civil unrest, basically forcing the entire city into lockdown under police control. As the lockdown drags on, and tensions inside the dome rise, Jamal finds himself making unlikely allies with a secretive hacker and an AWOL military recruit in a bid to bring down the corrupt forces controlling Baltimore and free the city.

It’s never easy to be the new student, but when you’re recovering from a near-death experience that orphaned you just months before, transferring to an ultra-competitive boarding school on an isolated island can make adjusting even more of a challenge. Finch Chamberlin has been through something unspeakable. Unknowable. As in she literally doesn’t know why she’s not dead like her parents, or what the terrible, ancient being was that kept her alive. But ever since waking up, she’s been drawn to Ulalume Academy. There she meets Selena St. Clair, who feels drawn to Finch even though she doesn’t quite trust her. But no matter Selena’s suspicions, when the two girls and their group of friends accidentally raise a horrible monster whose existence threatens not just their lives but the safety of the whole island, Finch and Selena must work together to defeat the creature before it’s too late.

Briseis is a girl with a gift that at times seems more like a curse. Though her ability to take a plant from seed to full flower with a single touch is a boon for her mothers’ florist shop, the way that every plant Briseis passes tries to uproot itself just to get close to her makes it hard to be out in public. And her abilities frighten those close to her, making friends hard to hold on to. So how, when even her mothers seem nervous about her powers, can Briseis ever explain the other part of her gift? The dark and fascinating ability she can’t help but explore: her strange affinity for and immunity to even the most deadly of poisonous plants.

When a woman claiming to be her Aunt dies and Briseis is suddenly willed the woman’s massive estate in rural New York, it seems too good to be true. Not only will it solve the financial problems plaguing her family, the vast fields and woods around the estate will finally give Briseis a chance to stretch her powers. And maybe even find out how she came by her extraordinary gift. But this unexpected gift comes with dangerous strings attached.

I was never able to predict this book, not for one second. Bayron kept me on my toes the whole time and yet I never felt that as a reader I was being thrown twists just for the sake of unpredictability. Every inch of This Poison Heart’s intricate plot is immaculately laid out; all the pieces to the puzzle there just waiting for Briseis (and the reader) to unlock the secret of who she is and where she comes from. Thank the book gods, however, that the sequel comes out later this year, because that ending had me stressed out. If you’re someone who doesn’t like being left hanging, book two, This Wicked Fate, will be out in June, so you might want to wait and read them both at the same time.

Me, I’ll just re-read and cry my same tears.

I loved Bayron’s inclusion of Greek mythology in her world building. I should have expected it, given Briseis first name and the eventual reveal of her biological family’s surname, but it still took me pleasantly by surprise that it became such a large part of the plot. And though it shouldn’t need pointing out, I also want to express my appreciation for how casually queer This Poison Heart was. Briseis’ two mothers – Thandie and Angie – are amazing. Aside from being the epitome of marriage goals, they’re also a prominent part of Briseis’ journey. A journey which includes Briseis falling for the mysterious Marie – who knows more than she admits about Briseis’ biological family and their secrets – without her sexuality itself having to be part of the plot. She likes Marie, and that’s just a fact. Queer people just are, without anyone having to have a coming out character arc. It’s nice, and frankly Briseis has enough to deal with as it is, what with a dangerous group of unknowns determined to use her in their hunt for a fabled elixir of immortality.

Whether you’re a poisonous plant nerd, a fan of Greek mythology, a lover of cozy apothecary horror (the cozy is more early on, before things get seriously creepy), or looking for more queer fantasy horror by Black women to add to your reading list, I cannot recommend This Poison Heart enough. It’s thrilling, funny, heartfelt, dark, and beautiful.

Though history knows her as Anna Darvulia, the Blood Countess’s witch companion, at the beginning of Popović’s book, Anna is just a scullery maid brought on to work in the castle of the glamorous, beautiful Countess Elizabeth Báthory. When Anna catches the Countess’s eye, she finds herself elevated above her station to the role of the Countess’s personal maid and companion. A confidante. Ultimately, her plaything, as Anna soon finds herself drawn deep under the Countess’s influence and isolated from everyone she knows and loves. The prisoner of a murderer. And Anna knows that being Elizabeth’s pet will only spare her life for so long before the Blood Countess eventually turns on her as well.

When I Arrived at the Castle is a brilliant work of Gothic, erotic horror, rendered in Carroll’s favored white, black, and red palette. In this retelling, a young cat-like girl arrives at a dark castle on a story night on a mission to destroy the evil within. Too many girls have come before her, never to be seen again, and the beautiful woman at the castle door hides a monster behind her face. When I Arrived at the Castle is definitely strange and unexpected in the best ways. It’s also queer! In fact, I should point out, that all three of the titles on this list are queer horror.

Caveat: While I was putting this newsletter together, I made the disappointing discovery that apparently When I Arrived at the Castle is out of print. I choose not to take it out of the newsletter because, again, I find Carroll’s work brilliant, and worth the effort to track down. And, thankfully, we have libraries and the glorious power of inter-library loans!

The wait to October is going to be SO long, because I am already dying to get my hands on Alexis Henderson’s new queer, Gothic horror novel, inspired by the Báthory legend. Seeing it as her only means of escaping the city and poverty she was born into, Marion Shaw answers a newspaper listing to be a bloodmaid for a wealthy noble woman in the north. A servant in the infamous House of Hunger, presided over by the seductive and beautiful Countess Lisavet. When Lisavet fixes her eye on Marion, it seems Marion’s fortunes are on the rise, but a string of disappearing bloodmaids throws Marion’s new life into chaos. She finds her self drawn into a dangerous game that may well see Marion numbered among the missing herself.

Compared to the other titles on this list, the cult in This Might Hurt is almost toothless. It takes advantage of emotionally vulnerable people like most cults, but it doesn’t have any higher motivation or purpose. It’s not even particularly dangerous, just manipulative. BUT. What happens when a promising new initiate proves to be a budding fanatic, who believes in the cult’s teachings even more than its founder? And has the ambition to match? What I love about This Might Hurt is that it’s almost like the origin story of a real cult. Though, as far as Natalie Collins knows, Wisewood isn’t a cult. It’s just a self-help facility! Really! The latest attempt by Natalie’s wayward sister Kit to pull her life together. But when a threatening email brings Natalie to Wisewood in search of Kit, it quickly becomes clear that something sinister is going on behind the scenes. Kit is acting strange, and if Natalie wants to save her sister she’ll have to get them both off the island before things get worse.

I’m not saying Academia is a cult but … I’m not not saying that either. I mean that’s (part of) the whole point of Dark Academia, right? Higher education but make it cultish? In Elisabeth Thomas’ fabulous gothic novel, the students of Catherine House go on to become some of the greatest minds in their chosen fields, but at a cost. In return for free tuition, room, board, and the promise of a bright future, accepted students give up their lives to Catherine House for three whole years. No outside contact. No family or friends, no media, no personal clothing. It seems like an easy choice for Ines, who expected to trade in her unhealthy past for a new life of study and potential. But instead she finds a world of secrets, parties, and high strung students competing for dominance. At any cost.

Sometimes a cult isn’t a group of strangers, sometimes it’s your cousin, her asshole husband, her husband’s creepy family, and their weird mushroom mediatrix. Not that Noemí knew what she was getting into when she first arrived at High Place, home of the strange (and extremely suspect) Doyle family, an old English family living in their crumbling family estate in the mountains. You could argue that in order for this to be a cult horror, the Doyle family would have to consist of more than its handful of pale, perishing descendants. But from the moment Noemí sets foot in High Place, she’s subjected to near constant gaslighting, coercion, and biochemical interference until she begins to question her own sanity. And all of it with the intention of forcing her to be “one of” the family.

For those playing along at home, check off a box on your card because that is a cult.

You’ll have to wait until May to get your hands on this forthcoming Nightfire title, but if you’re looking for a creepy cult, you’ll definitely want to add Just Like Mother to your list. Maeve was raised in a matriarchal cult before she escaped and built a new life for herself on the outside, albeit a lonely and isolated one. Which is why, when her cousin Andrea (who Maeve last saw the night of her escape) suddenly reappears, Maeve finds herself clinging to one of the few real attachments she has left in the world. The more time Maeve spends with Andrea, the more she becomes disconnected from her new life in New York and drawn into Andrea’s wealthy, fertility industry-funded world. And why not? Andrea is the only family she has now. But there’s something not quite right about Andrea’s friends and her work, and before long, Maeve has to wonder whether she’s escaped one cult only to be drawn into another.

Echo is the sort of queer horror love story that I desperately need more of in my life. Don’t be dissuaded by the official synopsis, because I don’t think it describes the book particularly well. Yes, Echo is about Nick surviving a terrible mountaineering accident that killed his climbing buddy Augustin and left Nick horribly scarred, haunted by the mountain Maudit that nearly took his life. But Echo isn’t just Nick’s story, it’s also about his boyfriend Sam. The pov passes back and forth between the two of them (Sam’s reality vs Nick’s written account of what happened) and Echo is as much about their pasts and their relationship as it is about trying to break Nick free of the mountain’s hold. It’s honestly so good, so emotional, and beautifully written.

Cold is a YA thriller with a bit of ghost story thrown in, told from the dual perspective of Todd and Georgia, two queer teens and social outcasts who didn’t know each other before Todd’s death brought them together. Sort of. Because all that’s left of Todd is a ghost, hovering over his own murdered body, recounting the events that led to his corpse being abandoned in the snow. And though they were strangers to each other, when she hears about Todd’s death, Georgia feels compelled to find out what happened to him. Cold is kind of heartbreaking, to be honest. On the surface it seems like the set up for a perfect murder mystery, with a bit of paranormal ghostliness thrown in. But at its heart, Cold is more of a character study of Georgia and Todd as they navigate a world that seems to have no place for them and that, for one of them, proved fatal.

Oh my god where do I START with Dead Silence. This book terrified me. I had to put it down at one point because I was reading and there was too much empty space around me. For real, I couldn’t even look at a dark, open doorway. Dead Silence is about an ill-fated attempt by an about-to-be-unemployed ship’s crew, staffing a small vessel tasked with repairing communications beacons. Their last beacon, way at the edge of the system, picks up a distress signal coming from outside the network, somewhere beyond the edge of “civilized” space. A signal that belongs the the Aurora, a luxury space liner that vanished into thin air on its maiden voyage, never to be seen again… Barnes is giving you Titanic but make it scary, she’s giving you Event Horizon, she’s giving you Ghost Ship; for real, this book will make your skin crawl.

You had me at “slow-burn social horror” about race and class. This is definitely going to be one of those books that keeps you in a perpetually paranoid state of not knowing who to trust. Which of course is exactly what you want from a thriller, right? Farrah Turner and Cherish Whitman are best friends, and the only two Black girls at their country club. But while Farrah lives with her biological parents, Cherish lives with her wealthy, white adopted parents who adore and spoil their daughter. When Farrah’s own family encounters sudden financial hardships, she starts a calculated campaign to – for all intents and purposes – take over Cherish’s life. While staying at Cherish’s house, Farrah begins trying to manipulate her way into the Whitman family, only to realize that things beneath that loving, pristine façade are not quite what they seem. As events inside the house begin to escalate and grow ever stranger, Farrah’s legendary control begins to falter, leaving her to wonder if she ever had control of the Whitmans to begin with.

Extasia is the perfect blend of The Year of the Witching with a healthy dose of The Village thrown in for that wonderful “what the hell just happened” feel. I thought I was getting “witchy Sapphic girls band together to save their village from evil” and instead I got “witchy Sapphic girls burn down the patriarchy” and I couldn’t be happier. Our heroine starts out the book without a name, because her birth name doesn’t matter, all that will matter is the name she takes when she becomes one of the saints that protects her village from the evil picking off their men one by one. But when saving her home means crossing the line from sainthood into witchcraft, she quickly finds out that the people she’s determined to protect may not be worth all that she’ll have to sacrifice. Extasia is gorgeous, dark, gloriously queer, and wow did it make me want to rage. It’s not an easy book to read in the world we’re currently living in, but it’s also incredibly cathartic! (Particularly the “burn shit down” part.)

The Whispering Dead (first in the Gravekeeper series) is what you’d get if the quintessential cozy mystery had a baby with a ghost story. It comes complete with a slightly run down but adorable cottage; a suspiciously intelligent stray cat; and a memorable array of secondary small town characters. Though not the type of scary that will leave you shaking in your seat, The Whispering Dead still packs a creepy punch as Keira investigates the murder of a young woman and uncovers a dark secret at the heart of this sleepy, unassuming town.

Out just in time for Halloween this last year, Cackle is the perfect marriage of all that is cozy horror. When Annie’s entire life is upended by her now ex, she decides to take a teaching job in upstate New York, and ends up moving into the perfect apartment in a friendly, picturesque little village. Everything seems to be off to a great start, especially when she meets Sophie. Beautiful, charismatic Sophie, who lives in a massive old house in the woods and who no one in town seems to trust. From cutesy small town stores to forest walks and farmers markets, ghosts, witchcraft, murder, and a bit of mayhem, Cackle has it all. Also, Rachel Harrison actually made me find a pet spider adorable, and honestly I don’t know what subgenre other than cozy horror could pull that off.

Though more atmospheric than outright scary, Mooncakes is a the perfect read if you’re missing those autumnal Halloween feels. If you’re looking for dark fall nights, witchcraft, demons, werewolves, and queer love, you can’t go wrong with this gorgeous graphic novel. Nova Huang is a witch from a family of witches, and works at her grandmothers’ bookshop in a tiny town in New England. Tam Lang, Nova’s childhood crush, used to call the same town home, but she hasn’t been back in years. So Nova is surprised to find that rumours about a white wolf in the woods lead her to Tam, who is locked in battle with a demon. Dark magic and occult rituals serve as the backdrop for Nova and Tam’s budding romance as they work together to discover the source of the evil that threatens their town.

Maybe it’s an excess of plants that my brain finds cozy? The whole idea of a big old dilapidated estate surrounded by its vast gardens just fills my brain with joy. Especially when one of the gardens is comprised of nothing but the world’s most deadly plants. Cozy murder. This is the very setting where Briseis finds herself spending the summer, at the estate of her dead aunt. There, Bri hopes that she will learn to control her extraordinary gift: the ability to grow plants from seed to full bloom with just a touch of her hand. As she falls into creating tinctures and elixirs for those who come to the house seeking help, Bri meets Marie, a young woman keeping dark secrets who knows more about the estate than she is letting on.

There’s just something inherently cozy about middle grade horror. Probably because it can be plenty creepy, even downright scary at times, but it doesn’t go as hard as some YA or adult horror and it tends to end on a high note while emphasizing themes of family and friendship. In Ghost Squad, Lucely Luna and her best friend Syd have to band together with Syd’s witch grandmother and her adorable cat to fight a host of malicious spirits that Lucely accidently unleashed on St. Augustine. This delightful middle grade horror is exactly what I’m talking about when I refer to an emphasis on family and friendship. Any chance that Lucely, Syd, Babette, and (the aptly named tabby cat) Chunk have to save their town relies entirely on the bonds between them. MG horror makes for perfect cozy horror reading because it can give you genuine stakes that you can invest in, but you have the reassurance that everything will be okay in the end.

As Horror readers, it can sometimes take a lot to shake us. But at the same time, we should never strive to become immune to the things in horror that upset or discomfort us. Because at its heart, horror is an empathetic genre.You have to let yourself feel it, respond to it. It is my belief that, by extension, horror makes us more empathetic, sympathetic human beings. If horror makes us flinch, that’s a good thing.

Such a Pretty Smile is a raw, bloody, open wound of a book, and DeMeester does not shrink from the violence against women – both physical and mental – that serves as her central theme. (Which is why I’ve tried to highlight some of the bigger content warnings down below, fyi.) But one thing I really loved about this book is that the violence, though visceral and at times tough to read, is never gratuitous. For something to be gratuitous it has to be unwarranted, unnecessary, and play no reasonable part in the telling of the story. But the story in question, that of a mother and daughter struggling against a vicious cycle of intergenerational and social traumas, is inherently violent and every drop of blood spilled is vital.

Told from two perspectives across two timelines, Such a Pretty Smile covers a span of 15 years in the lives of Caroline and her 13 year old daughter, Lila. In 2004, Caroline is a talented young artist weighed down by her duty to her dying father and the insecure overbearance of her fiancé, a man who is supposed to be in love with her but seems more interested in surpassing her. When she starts hearing the phantom barking and screaming of dogs, Caroline uncovers a part of herself she had forgotten and a dark secret from her past that will come to shape not only her life, but Lila’s as well.

In 2019, Lila is struggling with societal and parental expectations, the neglect of her distant father, and her own developing sexuality. Lila has a crush on her popular best friend Macie, but her feelings for Macie are complicated by the other girl’s casual cruelty, and her determination to transform Lila into the “right” kind of girl. When Lila’s growing resentment and unrequited feelings start to manifest in strange and frightening ways, she begins to clash with the fragile façade of a life that Caroline has constructed to protect them both. And in doing so, she opens the door to a darkness in Caroline’s past that threatens both their lives.

It’s a story about what it means to be a woman, living in a world determined to make you small, and meek, and above all, quiet. About the trauma that results from being forced to conform for safety, and how, in trying to protect her daughter, a mother can end up perpetuating the very societal rules and expectations that were used to suppress her own identity and joy. Caroline conformed for survival, and she has been trying ever since to keep her daughter sweet, good, compliant, and therefore safe. But the harder Caroline tries to protect her daughter, the more she kindles Lila’s anger, which draws the attention of the omnipresent third figure in Such a Pretty Smile: The Cur. As much metaphor as man or monster, The Cur leaves behind a trail of murdered and mutilated girls, punctuating both Caroline and Lila’s timelines with corpses.

Not all of the fungi on this list are out to take over our bodies. I promise. But Cad? Cad is definitely a fungi of the concerning, mind-altering kind, and coming into contact with it ends in one of three ways: death, immunity, or infection. For those, like Reid, who have been infected, Cad forms a symbiotic relationship with its host, even offering them a measure of protection in order to ensure its own survival. Because for Cad, survival is paramount. It even posses the ability to manipulate its hosts fear responses to ensure continued survival. Reid lives in a shrinking colony of survivalists, scraping out a living in a world devastated by climate disasters. Those who leave never return. So when a letter arrives inviting Reid to join an exclusive university – one of the last strongholds of civilization – she finds herself torn between the family and colony that rely on her, and a future beyond the meager existence she’s always known. There may even be a chance to find a cure for Cad before it consumes her entirely. While The Annual Migration of Clouds is more sci-fi than horror, I promise there are a few squirm-worthy moments of body horror involving mushrooms in places where mushrooms… should not be.

Speaking of mind-controlling fungi: I debated whether to add The Luminous Dead to this list, if only because the spore-happy cave mold Gyre encounters underground – though technically a fungi – isn’t 100% proven to be the biological villain of the book. Most of what happens could just be in Gyre’s head. But it’s also not 100% NOT responsible for the strange happenings that plague her as she tries to make her way into the depths of the unmarked cave system, with only her extremely suspect handler Em as her guide. At worst, it’s some ancient, malicious fungus determined to control her mind to keep her from ever leaving the cave. At best (questionably best) it’s simply driven by an extremely strong biological imperative to keep her in the cave so it can colonize her corpse and propagate. Either way, it’s bad news. Particularly if you’re already stranded miles underground, low on supplies, and running out of power for the suit that is literally the only thing keeping you alive. At that point a pushy mind-melting mold is the last thing you need.

If I haven’t convinced you to read Sorrowland by now, I really need to try harder. Cults, religious fanaticism, genetic experimentation, queer characters, fungi; it’s honestly every thing you could want in one book. Determined to escape the strict religious compound in which she was raised – Cainland – and the horrible, nightly experiments she was forced to endure there, a heavily pregnant Vern flees into the woods to give birth to her children. Though there is no way of knowing if any of them will survive the experience, she will do anything to ensure that her children are free of Cainland’s grasp. But Vern did not escape unscathed. She survives the birth of her children, but as she struggles to keep them all alive in an unfamiliar world, her own body begins to betray her, permanently altered by Cainland’s strange experiments. She’s transforming into something new, dangerous, and unknown – and whatever she’s becoming, Cainland desperately wants to conceal. Sorrowland can be a rough read at times, grappling as it does with various heavy topics, but is also beautiful, strange, and unforgettable.

That cover is so gorgeous and so upsetting, I honestly can’t even stand it. (I love it.) Obviously, you can see why I’m so excited about this book. Oh, and did I mention that it’s an adaptation of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”? Why, oh why is July so far away! What Moves the Dead, much like Poe’s original tale, is centered around the slow, rotting death of an aristocratic family and their moldering estate. Alex Easton is summoned to the ancestral home of the Ushers by their childhood friend Madeline, who entreats them for help to save the state from the nightmarish fungi that have overtaken the landscape and possessed the local wildlife. With the help of a mycologist and a doctor, Alex must discover the source of Madeline’s disturbed nights, her brother Roderick’s nervous malady, and the rampant, unnatural fungi if they have any hope of saving their friends. If they fail, the House of Usher itself will fall and take them all down with it.