October 24, 2020
Haunting, scary, spooky, creepy, frightening, gothic, and ghostly—how many ways can we describe the novels that make us shiver, and the stories that seep into our dreams? Here are some of the best new books in the genre that might keep you up at night.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Anthill
By Julianne Pachico
Published by Doubleday Books
Set in Medellín, Colombia in a daycare center for street kids, Pachico’s novel mixes up the genres to combine a ghost story with social commentary. When the adult Lina revisits her childhood refuge sinister events begin to happen, including sightings of a wild, unearthly child!
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Night of the Mannequins
By Stephen Graham Jones
Published by Tor
Graham Jones, is having a good year (see our terrific event from July with Victor LaValle for his novel The Only Good Indians) and his reputation as a writer to watch in the horror genre grows. His new novella is a contemporary ghost story with a sly first-person narrator, a killer mannequin and teenagers run amok. Aspects of film noir and a heart-stopping pace confirm his prodigious talents as a storyteller.
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Plain Bad Heroines
By Emily M. Danforth
Published by William Morrow & Company
This darkly comic horror novel is Danforth’s first book for adults. It starts in a creepy Victorian boarding school setting and moves into the present as the macabre history of the institution is dredged up by the making of a new film. Think Sarah Waters, with its queer feminist twist—with illustrations, too.
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Fledgling
By Octavia E. Butler
Published by Grand Central
A Center for Fiction favorite who has had a booming revival as many of her books are brought back to print—this is Butler’s last novel and more evidence of her place at the top of the pantheon of speculative fiction writers. Here the heroine is a girl with amnesia—but is she human? Genetically modified? Or a vampire?
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The Hollow Ones
By Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Published by Grand Central
This novel of psychological horror starts a new series, The Blackwood Tapes, from the Mexican Oscar-winning filmmaker del Toro and bestselling Hogan. What happens when you have to turn your gun on your own partner? A young FBI agent is thrust into a complex mystery that makes her question her sanity.
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Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror
By Lincoln Michael & Naxieli Nieto
Published by Black Balloon
The short short stories in this excellent collection come from terrific writers like Stephen Graham Jones, Jac Jemc, Rion Amlicar Scott, Amber Sparks, and many others representing every aspect of horror. Like a master class in writing the genre, these editors also brought us Tiny Crimes, and we hope they pick another genre to anthologize!
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