Top 10 Best New Horror Titles

The Reformatory
by Tananarive Due

When her brother Robbie gets six months at the notorious Gracetown Reformatory for Boys for kicking a white boy who said something indecent to her, Gloria Stephens is -devastated—and furious. Points of view alternate between Gloria, whose efforts to get Robbie released are aided by her elderly godmother, Miz Lottie, and Robbie, who suffers the horrors of Gracetown and its sadistic Warden Haddock. Gracetown is populated by more than the living, however, and Robbie has an unusual ability to see the haints of boys who died at the school. Haddock wants him to use his ability to help destroy the haints, threatening torture if he refuses, but the haints beg him not to, with a different kind of danger on offer if he assists the warden. Due brings the horrors of Jim Crow Florida to life, with human monsters who are far more chilling than anything supernatural. With fully realized characters and well-placed twists, she ratchets up the tension until the final, extraordinary showdown. Recommend to those who enjoyed Sarah Read’s The Bone Weaver’s Orchard (2019), LaTanya McQueen’s When the Reckoning Comes (2021), or Due’s short-story collection, Ghost Summer (2015), which features other tales set in the same part of rural Florida.
How to Sell a Haunted House
by Grady Hendrix

Louise, a single mother, lives in California with her five-year-old daughter, Poppy. She has spent her life trying to keep physical and emotional distance from her family in South Carolina, especially her overly indulged brother, Mark. But when her parents die suddenly, Louise is forced to return home and reckon with the secrets that have been haunting her family for generations—secrets that may be actively trying to kill them. Organized into sections that refer to the stages of grief, the story follows Louise as she cleans out her parents’ home, assessing hundreds of puppets and dolls that were her mom’s life’s work. The attic entrance is boarded up, the dolls appear to move on their own, and Pupkin, the unsettling clown puppet that was her mother’s favorite, seems to be at the center of it all. Closure will take more than Mark and Louise getting along; it will require them to truly understand one another before they can have any hope of making it through this ordeal alive. With strong connections to twenty-first century classics such as Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts (2015) and Joe Hill's Locke and Key (2009), 
Hendrix' book sets the high watermark for horror in 2023.
Don't Fear the Reaper
by Stephen Graham Jones

December 12, 2019, four years after the massacre at Indian Lake, Jade Daniels returns in the midst of a blizzard just as serial killer Dark Mills South murders his armed transport team and escapes. For the next 36 hours, the town of Proofrock, Idaho, will be forced to relive its trauma as killers out for revenge go on a bloody rampage. Armed with her slasher-movie knowledge, indefatigable spirit, and strong moral center, Jade will need to embrace her final-girl status if there is any hope of making it to Friday the thirteenth. Building off My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021), Jones gets right into the terrifyingly gory action, a pace that only sporadically allows for gulps of air. A multitude of voices get a chance to be heard and ultimately set the stage for Jade’s return. More than the slasher it presents itself as, this is a contemplation of the allure of the genre itself, a novel that acknowledges the well-trod ground upon which it stands while ingeniously burrowing new tunnels straight into readers’ nightmares. A superior example of twenty-first-century horror with a strong, emotionally heartfelt core where every detail matters, delivered by an author at the top of his game.
Holly: A Novel
by Stephen King

Stephen King's Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly's gradual transformation from a shy and reclusive (but also brave and ethical) homebody in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges's partner in Finders Keepers and End of Watch to a full-fledged, smart and occasionally tough private detective on her own in The Outsider and If It Bleeds. In this new novel, Holly once again claims the spotlight, and must face some of her most depraved adversaries yet. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her own mother has just died, and Holly is supposed to be taking time off. But something in Penny Dahl's desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie's disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are smart, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver this brilliant and twisted pair in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.
Lone Women: A Novel
by Victor LaValle

In 1915, Montana allows unmarried, Black women the opportunity to claim a homestead, so, having lived her entire life in a California farming community with her parents, Adelaide Henry, 31, sets off. But before she leaves, Adelaide places her murdered parents in bed and burns the house down. Taking only an overnight bag and a heavy, securely locked trunk containing her family’s curse, one that she is now solely responsible for controlling, Adelaide will attempt to flee her past while still shackled to it, thus setting LaValle’s latest, a pervasively uneasy and brilliantly plotted horror-western hybrid, in absorbing motion. Readers are led to Big Sandy to meet its marginalized and outcast citizens, feel the wide open, unforgiving landscape, and watch the captivating drama, both real and supernatural, unfold. Told with a pulp sensibility, this masterfully paced tale, with short chapters, heart-pounding suspense, a monster that is both utterly terrifying and heartbreakingly beautiful, and a story line focused on the power of women, bursts off the page. Great for fans of thought-provoking horror that probes the inherent terror of marginalization without sacrificing the visceral action, as written by Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
My Darling Girl
by Jennifer McMahon

Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call. Mavis, Alison's estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. But Alison grew up with her mother's alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories. Still, she eventually agrees to take in Mavis, hoping that she and her mother could finally heal and have the relationship she's always dreamed of. But when mysterious and otherworldly things start happening upon Mavis's arrival, Alison begins to suspect her mother is not quite who she seems. And as the holiday festivities turn into a nightmare, she must confront just how far she is willing to go to protect her family.
The September House
by Carissa Orlando

Orlando's debut is a ghostly psychological tale of victims of unrestrained violence and murder. Margaret and her husband, Hal, had transient upbringings and always desired a permanent home. Just after buying the ideal Victorian house, they discovered it was haunted but remained intent on staying anyway. In September, the paranormal activity escalates to extreme levels, only to die back down in October. Margaret believes if she follows the rules, everything will be okay, because the rules apply to the living and the dead. And after four years in their dream house, she knows which specters to avoid and how to avoid them. Hal, not so much—which may be why he left just before their fourth September was to begin. When their estranged daughter Katherine, who has been trying unsuccessfully to reach Hal, decides to come for her first-ever visit, Margaret is distraught. It is September, and she is unsure how to protect Katherine from the ghosts' increasingly violent antics. Offer this to fans of spooky haunted-house tales like Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House (2023).
The Drift: A Novel
by C. J. Tudor

The author of The Chalk Man (2018), The Burning Girls (2021), and the recent short-story collection A Sliver of Darkness (2022) has surpassed herself with this postapocalyptic thriller. After an extremely contagious virus has made its way around the world, civilization is in shambles. In the middle of a snowstorm, small groups of people are trying to reach a place called the Retreat, where cures for the virus are being tested. Three strangers, Hannah, Meg, and Carter, come together to fight for survival and, as it turns out, to save humanity. Tudor is a magnificent storyteller. The writing here is powerful, with shifting points of view keeping the story moving at a brisk clip, as the author piles questions on top of questions, constantly giving the reader something new to ponder. Tudor started with a bang with The Chalk Man and gone on to become one of the strongest voices in genre blending, adroitly combining elements of horror, SF, and thriller. The Drift has already been optioned for television, but don’t wait for the TV series—this is a book that demands to be read now.
Looking Glass Sound
by Catriona Ward

Ward’s latest may be her scariest yet. It’s 1989, and Wilder, an awkward boy, spends the summer in Maine at his late uncle’s oceanside cabin, quickly befriending Harper and Nat, who teach him about island life and the lore of the Dagger Man, who takes Polaroids of sleeping children with knives to their throats. Returning the next summer, Wilder cannot wait to see his friends before heading to college, until their lives are up ended forever by their part in the discovery of the horrific truth behind the Dagger Man. However, these revelations are just the start, as various versions of what happened are presented, one after the other, each slightly different than the last. The result is a physically unsettling reading experience both because of the uncomfortable stylistic choices Ward makes and how the story itself cannot be trusted until the very last page. A tale dripping with existential dread, one that asks readers to contemplate how they tell their own stories. For fans of psychological horror that incorporates the act of storytelling in its terrifying narrative, such as The Remaking (2019), by Clay McLeod Chapman, The Pallbearers Club (2022), by Paul Tremblay, or Plain Bad Heroines (2020), by Emily M. Danforth. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: On the heels of the success of Little Eve (2022) (not to mention a large print run), expect patrons to turn to Ward for late-summer chills.
Mister Magic: A Novel
by Kiersten White

In the popular, mid-1990s kids' show Mister Magic, the Mary Poppins/Willy Wonka/Peter Pan–like titular character used a catchy tune to teach a group of children, called the Circle of Friends, helpful lessons. They learned right from wrong while using their imaginations to play. When a cast member disappeared, the show ended abruptly after a decades-long run. Information about the show was scrubbed from the internet and no footage can be found. All that remains are rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories. Did the show really exist? Can recollections of it be trusted? When a podcaster arranges a reunion of the remaining Circle of Friends, they return to the house where their parents lived during filming. But why have they really been brought back together, and what happens when their circle is broken? As the former cast members exchange memories, they are forced to keep secrets and their loyalties are questioned. In this frightening, nostalgic, and original plot, White explores themes of racism, homophobia, and sexism. Savvy readers will devour the subtext and ponder philosophical questions about reality.
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