The Fright Stuff

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Strange things abound in a small town in Tamil Nadu, including a local secondary school bursting with supernatural creatures.

Thamarai is an outsider, and her peers consider her strange. Her life is anything but happy or comfortable, and she’s constantly frustrated with her neighbors and her teachers.

But then Thamarai finds a notebook at school which purports to explain all of the supernatural happenings. Suddenly, she thinks she’s found a way out of her misery. With comparisons to Mona Awad’s Bunny and Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing, this one sounds like a totally weird horror winner.

Eden has the opportunity of a lifetime to audition for Leanora Karagianni’s company. Leanora is mysterious, and she’s a tragic figure in the ballet world, but Eden is obsessed with winning that spot. She’s sequestered with six other hopefuls at Deveraux Manor, hidden among the mountains, and the competition is fierce.

Not only are Eden’s peers fighting to the death to prove they deserve that coveted spot. The house is also twisting around them, trying to take them all out one by one. Eden will have to continue to focus on her art to succeed, as hard as it is with danger all around (and her ever-growing feelings for Leanora).

This one combines the high-stakes, bloody world of ballet with the sinister nature of a secluded and vindictive house.

Khaw’s back with another novella that packs a punch. This one follows Antigone, who wakes up to find the black dog on her front porch. For all of the women in her family, the black dog’s arrival means death is near.

But rather than fear for what’s to come, Antigone invites the black dog in. She befriends the dog, using the encounter as an opportunity to reflect on her life. One of the things she’s considering is just how exhausted she is, and maybe, Antigone thinks, Death’s arrival is finally her chance to slow down and let go.

But Antigone’s desire for a good death may come at a steep price.

When Dartrine Beaumont’s mom dies, she thinks she’s the last one left in her family. But then she’s delighted–and confused–to learn of family she never knew about living in Florida. She’s going to head to her grandmother’s estate on Amelia Island, and when Dart arrives, she learns that she’s just in time to claim an inheritance. It’s no ordinary inheritance, though. It’s an alligator farming empire.

Things aren’t going well when Dart is at the estate. She’s fighting with another potential heir to the empire, and threats are happening on one of the farms. Then there’s Dart’s grandmother, who believes the danger arising on the farm comes from an ancestral curse. It’s out there, but Dart sees some of the weird things happening and wonders if her grandma’s beliefs may not be made up.

Dart’s beginning to dig into her family’s history and the potential curse lingering over the alligator farms. Does she want to stay and fight it out, or is she better off living like her mother did, imagining that she has no familial ties at all?

Tapeesa has lived in her Inupiat village, Chukchi, her entire life. Now that she’s graduated from high school, she’s working at a fish processing plant. People think she’s not very smart; her mother says that she’s been cursed with bad blood.

She is familiar with the legend of kushtuka, the hungry creature who appears in the form of a loved one, urging to be followed. No one who has followed the kashtuka has been able to explain where they’ve followed it to.

Just north of her village, white men have set up long-term living arrangements to mine rare earth. Their arrival always comes with death. So when Tapeesa’s sister, Esther, goes missing, Tapeesa will do whatever she can to find her. But as she leaves her village in search of Esther, things get bad fast. Very, very fast.

More Indigenous horror? Yes, please! This is the first in a series, and Zellar’s storytelling about the kashtuka may be familiar if you’ve read Never Whistle at Night.

If you’re looking for horror that’s a fun nostalgia trip, this will be right up your alley.

Beechnut Mall is condemned, but it used to be the hot hangout place 30 years ago. For Colleen, life feels a lot like that abandoned mall. But when her old clique reunites for one last hoorah at their former hang, they’re sucked back in time. It’s now 1995, and they’ve been dropped into the mall the night one of their friends, Beth, disappeared forever.

The crew is bound and determined to figure out what happened that night. But every time it seems they get closer to a lead, secrets, lies, and betrayals pop up, exposing the truths behind each of the friends’ lives.

Mall fiction always hits the right notes, and this one will have you thinking about Sam Goody, candy stores, Gap, and more–all while trying to figure out how Beth died.

Five years after the massacres in The Only Good Indians, one of the survivors of the revenge murders, Nathan Yellow Tail, is in the hospital. He’s survived an accident that should’ve killed him and his pal Sebby, who is also in the hospital, having barely survived.

Nate realizes he can turn his life around. He’s got a camper van and three older Blackfeet. They’re going to find the bones of the only Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Once they do that, they’ll repatriate the boy home.

Too bad that the bones have allowed something else to escape in the process.

Readers looking for Indigenous horror already know and love Stephen Graham Jones, and this next entry in his catalog of moving and terrifying reads promises to deliver.

The pitch for this one is Hamlet with a sapphic twist.

Odette and her best friend, Cecilia, grew up between two grand homes, allowed to roam wherever and however they wished. This was despite Odette’s mother, Lydia, being needy. Very, very needy.

But when Lydia dies, everything changes. Odette’s father withdraws; Odette disappears into herself, leaving Cecilia alone; and Odette’s cruel aunt, Claudine, begins to take charge of the household.

When Claudine then becomes Odette’s stepmother, Odette and Cecilia feel betrayed–and so does the spirit that awakens. It’s the spirit of Lydia, who is out for revenge.