This book was the perfect spooky read! Reminded me a lot of the show Haunting of Hill House, but in the best way.
Our Gifted Hearts by Jennifer Kennedy, (List Price: $18.99, Angry Robot, 9781836730194, October 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Dowdy, Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, Louisiana
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Queer fandom was “one of the first fault lines, I suppose you could say, of me beginning to question all the things that I had been taught,” says Sen, who came to realize that they were nonbinary through the material, which felt as eye-opening as it did illicit. “I was not supposed to be there,” Sen remembers with a laugh, “and every time my dad found out, he would block the website and I would have to go and find another one.”
― SenLinYu, Interview, Bustle
What booksellers are saying about Alchemised
About SenLinYu
SenLinYu grew up in the Pacific Northwest and studied classical liberal arts and culture. They started writing in the Notes app of their phone during their baby’s nap time. Their collected online works have garnered over twenty million individual downloads and have been translated into twenty-three languages. They live in Portland with their family. Alchemised is their first novel.
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There are many examples of this kind of thing throughout history. I was actually inspired by a specific historical event; I came across the true story of a village in Oxfordshire in the 1700s in which a great rumor was said to be spreading that five sisters had been “seized with frequent barking in the manner of dogs.” I was obviously fascinated to imagine how the girls’ community would have responded to their case, and how this rumor spreading might easily have become dangerous and even violent…I agree [that the] incredibly sinister aspect of Shirley Jackson’s work, the vilification of the mundane…is definitely terrain that The Hounding shares with Jackson’s stories. Like her, I’m very interested in thinking about the everyday awfulness of people, but I also wanted to try to understand even my most detestable characters. I really wanted to find a degree of sympathy for all of them in order to inhabit their thoughts and feelings.
― Xonebe Purvis, Interview, Indies Introduce, American Booksellers Association
What booksellers are saying about The Hounding
About Xonebe Purvis
Xonebe Purvis was born in Tokyo in 1990. She studied English Literature at the University of Oxford, has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, and was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She is a writer and literary researcher, with essays published in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine, and elsewhere.
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What’s scarier: a haunted house in the Everglades or a toxic female friendship? Por que no los dos? Lush, eerie, and intense, Mayra is Shirley Jackson by way of I-95. I loved Gonzalez’s writing, which manages to be funny and wry while also pressing on the tender bruises of adolescence and insecurity. More Florida horror by women, please!
Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, (List Price: $28, Random House, 9780593731550, July 2025)
Reviewed by Rachel Knox, Tombolo Books in St Petersburg, Florida
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If you talk about witches nowadays and you ask somebody to picture a witch, they’d probably say a pointy hat, a broom, a black cat. They are no longer considered malevolent.
Witches in Central Mexico are a bit different from the traditional European image of the witch. They are evil. They’re intent on causing harm to their neighbors, to the community. They often can shape-shift. I wanted to go towards those [versions] as opposed to having something like the modern archetype.
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Interview, People
What booksellers are saying about The Bewitching
About Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the New York Times bestselling author of Silver Nitrate, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has won the Locus and British Fantasy awards for her work as a novelist, and the World Fantasy Award as an editor.
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Driving out of Hileah, FL into the muggy yet lush Everglades, down Alligator Alley, Ingrid comes closer and closer to a reunion with her childhood best friend (and somewhat frenemy) Mayra in a labyrinth house, deep in the swamp. What follows in Nicky Gonzalez’s Mayrais a haunting hallucination as the house shifts and changes, history becomes blurred, and memory becomes hazy, all told through the story structure of horror. Mayra has shades of the Southern gothic, but ultimately crafts its own uniquely Florida gothic. This fan of Shirley Jackson devoured this.
Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, (List Price: $28, Random House, 9780593731550, July 2025)
Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
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Where to even begin with this book other than wowza. I was not expecting to be given the most thrilling sapphic monster romance in the entire world. But Not Too Bold gave me goosebumps, and I fear that’s all you really need to know about how incredible it was.
But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo, (List Price: $24.99, Tordotcom, 9781250376633, February 2025)
Reviewed by Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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The mythology of the bog wife began with other stories about nonhuman women who marry into human families, like selkies. There is Welsh folklore of a woman made out of flowers who is brought to life. Thinking about those stories, what I find fun is that there is a certain amount of ambiguity as to how human this woman appears and how human she really is, and how much the husband in question is willfully deluding himself about having some kind of quasi-human marriage partner. I went back and forth about how much to physically describe the bog wife and how much to describe the logistics of this dirt and plant woman who had raised five children and lived in a house and seemed to exist like a human for a while. I ultimately decided, which is pretty habitual for me, that I don’t care very much about the logistics. I wanted her to be in a state of flux. She is more human for a period of time and then less.
― Kay Chronister, Interview, Electric Literature
What booksellers are saying about The Bog Wife
About Kay Chronister
Kay Chronister is the author of Thin Places and Desert Creatures. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She lives outside of Philadelphia.
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It was an idea I’d been kicking around for a long time. I wanted to write a story that took place in just one night, but it didn’t feel like a whole novel. When my publisher asked if I had anything in the story drawer that might work for a novella, I thought of it immediately. The story grew from there, drawing on a lot of things in my academic past—including the graveyard behind my dorm where I hung out as an undergrad and my own experience of chronic insomnia and the desperation that it causes. Because I also work in the medical humanities, I was eager to try putting a sci-fi spin on something. With the length in mind, I wanted something fast-paced and fun, so I did kind of take Scooby Doo as a model. I’d like to think it’s a grown-up version of that—same wacky energy but with a little more intellectual substance.
― M. L. Rio, Interview, Los Angeles Public Library
What booksellers are saying about Graveyard Shift: A Novella
About M. L. Rio
M. L. Rio is the author of international bestseller If We Were Villains, which has been published in twenty countries and eighteen languages. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe and a PhD in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. Graveyard Shift is her first novella.
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As someone who has always been a little too soft for the world, nothing delights me more than living vicariously through fierce and hard as nail protagonists like Opal. Opal is fighting every day to make sure her brother doesn’t go without in the town of Eden. Despite barely having time to think, Opal begins to dream of Starling House, the Secret that no one talks about, and even though she knows better, she finds herself at the front door. Arthur is going to be the last warden of the Starling House, taking its legacy of monsters and magic down with him. He’s determined to be so until Opal breaks down the walls around his heart with her knock at Starling House’s door. This is a story of two people who are less than beautiful that smile with crooked teeth and black eyes, and I didn’t want it to end.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow, (List Price: $28.99, Tor Books, 9781250799050, October 2023)
Reviewed by Katlin Kerrison, Story on the Square in McDonough, Georgia
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I am more conscious of writing characters with agency than I am of writing “strong” characters. This is in part due to the fact that many of my early drafts flounder when the main characters lack agency, which I then need to address in revisions! With this story, however, I knew from the start I would intentionally give my main character a voice and a choice in her fate. I decided this for two reasons. First, women, especially those who were not members of the elite, are often silenced in the historical record due to the nature of the sources that survive from the pre- and early modern periods. Giving them a voice in fiction is very important to me. Second, female victims who lack agency is one of the great tropes of classic vampire fiction. Writing vampire stories in the post-Twilight era is a deft game of trope-tipping, and I absolutely wanted to knock that trope in particular on its head in a way that felt organic in a historical setting.
― Isabel Cañas, Interview, Nightmare Magazine
What booksellers are saying about Vampires of El Norte
About Isabel Cañas
Isabel Cañas is a Mexican American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, Turkey, and New York City, among other places, she has settled in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage.
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Eric Larocca’s newest novel Everything the Darkness Eats weaves cosmic horror with small town prejudice into a tale of creeping dread. Larocca never shies away from the gruesome or the traumatic and weaves these darkest parts alongside love. This Connecticut town is neither cozy nor warm, and is instead full of mysterious and bizarre disappearances, unrestrained bigotry and the dark effects of its most powerful resident Mr. Crowley. Interweaving two resident’s attempts to uncover and stop the horror, Larocca forces his characters to reckon with what means the most to them and to what lengths they’ll go for closure, revenge, and love. Perfect for fans of Clive Barker and other cosmic horror.
Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca, (List Price: 16.95, CLASH Books, 9781955904278, June 2023)
Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
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Out of necessity, Laura has chosen to live a simpler, yet, courageous life in a secluded, rustic cabin in the woods on the outskirts of an Italian village. Necessity turns into a reorganization of priorities, which I wholly admire, as Laura shares her thoughts with the reader on living with nature, interacting with others, and what it means to survive. Beautiful.
At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich, (List Price: 26, Two Dollar Radio, 9781953387318, June 2023)
Reviewed by Jill Naylor, Novel. in Memphis, Tennessee
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Thank you to Johnny Compton for writing such an excellent novel that highlighted an African-American family, but also for explaining what a spite house is. This is an amazing Gothic horror where we have a haunted house situation, the past always seems to catch up to us in the end, and you can feel the spooky ambiance the entire time you are reading! Eric Ross and his two daughters are currently avoiding their past lives and are living out of motel rooms when Eric reads a job listing to stay at a spite house in Texas to try to capture any evidence of supernatural activity. You get MULTIPLE point of views, but it keeps the story moving very well and it is almost seamless. For example, one moment you are reading the POV of the homeowner who is trying to employ Eric and she is finishing up a meeting with a group of ghost hunters and the next chapter is Eric’s POV and it mentions he walks into a meeting room as a group of men are walking out, so it literally picks up where another leaves off. However, there were a few POVs from side characters that I could have done completely without. It was nice to read about the previous tenants of the spite house who had taken the job right before Eric, though. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the twist about why the family is on the run is epic! One negative I would say is that the ending felt a little rushed and it did not hold up as well compared to the rest of the book in my opinion. However, that did not take anything away from how much I enjoyed the novel overall. Eric is a bad dude for staying in that creepy house by himself to try to make a better life for himself and his girls!
The Spite House by Johnny Compton, (List Price: 17.99, Tor Nightfire, 9781250891952, February 2023)
Reviewed by Kait Layton, The Haunted Book Shop in Mobile, Alabama
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The narrator of this scalpel-sharp and intoxicatingly gross debut is a parasite who is about to meet its match in the battle for control over the human heart, mind, and body. Fans of gothic lit, haunted mansions in ill repair, and biological or medical horror, eat your optic nerve—I mean, your heart—out! I generally don’t consider myself a fan of the above actually, but the incredibly unique narrator, the excellent and atmospheric world-building, and the both chillingly creepy and chillingly cold setting really hooked me. Highly recommended for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic and T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead!
Leech by Hiron Ennes, (List Price: $27.99, Tordotcom, 9781250811189, September 2022)
Reviewed by Megan Bell, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia
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