The Horror Writers Association's Reading List

"This eerie novel about a haunted boys’ prison in Jim Crow-era Florida was inspired by the troubled life and premature death of the author’s uncle, who died at the real-life Dozier School for Boys in 1937. “I was so struck by the sadness of this institution’s reign of terror that I knew I had to write about it—but not as nonfiction,” Due told Black Fiction Addiction . “I decided to fictionalize Robert Stephens and his experience to represent many nameless, faceless young people who suffered and lost their lives at the Dozier School. I made him 12 instead of 15 and changed the year to 1950, since I knew that era better from my mother’s stories. I also used ghosts to try to make the violence at the institution a bit more removed from my protagonist.” A creepy story of survival that is, quite literally, haunting—and has also won the Shirley Jackson Award and a LA Times Book Prize."

"When Louisa’s parents are killed in a car crash, she returns to her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to deal with their affairs. But when it comes to selling the beloved family home, it’s not just sibling rivalry that she has to worry about. A spooky story about complicated families in the American South from the author of The Final Girl Support Group , described by The New York Times as a “gripping, wildly entertaining exploration of childhood horrors.”"

"Horror superstar Stephen Graham Jones returns with Don’t Fear the Reaper, a terrifying (and very gory) homage to slasher flicks. In the second book in the Indian Lake Trilogy, Jade Daniels—freshly released following her wrongful imprisonment—returns home, just as the revenge-seeking serial killer Dark Mill South makes his own, illicit escape. Locus Online said it was “bloody and violent and utterly riveting”. We recommend reading the whole trilogy in order: start with My Heart is a Chainsaw , followed by Don’t Fear the Reaper , then finally The Angel of Indian Lake ."

"In this gothic novel, which fuses historical fiction with horror, we follow an African American woman living as a fugitive in the American West of 1915. Expect “a prevailing atmosphere of menace, a dramatic landscape, characters isolated from society, an imperilled heroine,” says Rumaan Ali in The New York Review of Books . Lone Women has been a national bestseller and was shortlisted for several other major awards."

"Cult internet icon (and high-concept erotica author) Chuck Tingle’s heartfelt horror debut is set in a demonic LGBT+ conversion camp in the remote Montana wilderness—where they plan to scare the gay away. In a starred review, Library Journal called it “highly entertaining, cinematic, and filled with monsters, both human and supernatural, all of which will lure horror fans to its pages, but what holds it all together is the immense love at the heart of the novel.”"

"In this unsettling, parable-like novel, a community’s obsession with a mysterious new fruit grown from only seven trees soon turns sour—and forces them to face up to their hometown’s dark history. It is, promises the Los Angeles Review of Books , “at once a commentary on contemporary culture and a timeless and wholly American horror novel that will appeal to longtime genre aficionados and newcomers alike.” Browse all our year-end lists highlighting the best books of 2024 here"

"Gabino Iglesias—who scooped the 2022 prize for best novel with his reluctant hitman tale The Devil Takes You Home — returns with this supernatural revenge fantasy set in Puerto Rico during 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria. “The book captures, in stunningly visceral detail, not only the havoc of a hurricane that left thousands dead, but also the everyday life of a vulnerable community before and after Maria’s arrival, troubled by a crumbling infrastructure and by decades of governmental neglect,” explained Christopher Bollen in a New York Times review . This social context provides the backdrop to the extreme violence meted out by the book’s protagonists, amid haunting magical realism. “If there is a novel that reads more like living through a hurricane, I’m not sure I have the survival skills to read it.”"

"This fictional confession set in smalltown Texas, 1989, presents as a stream-of-consciousness thriller through the eyes of a teen serial killer. Tolly Driver is a good kid—or at least he was. Now, with the help of his best friend Amber, a film buff with enough knowledge to guide him through the gore, he might just have a chance of getting away with it. It is, the author told Publishers Weekly , full of“slashers and hair metal, oil and cotton, trucks and tractors, dirt and sun—it’s where and when I grew up. And, yeah, there’s blood and screaming in this one, regret and longing, but more important, there’s a friendship that’s deeper than it has any right to be—that’s stronger than blades and death and time.”"

"Gwendolyn Kiste—a three time winner at the Bram Stoker Awards—has written a proper ghost story set in suburban America full of strange happenings and psychological suspense. It has a great concept: three young girls escape a mysterious event that otherwise traps their neighbourhood behind a ghostly veil. Why? Now an adult, one of them is tempted back to the scene of the happening to get to the bottom of it once and for all. More of a supernatural mystery than a true horror—but if you prefer creepy, atmospheric, character-driven stories as opposed t0 bloody gore-fests, then this is the book for you."

"This chilling domestic horror, told from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl who finds herself in conversation with a malevolent ‘Other Mommy’ who wants to gain access to her mind—or her family will pay. It comes with a rave review from Neil McRobert in Esquire which called it deeply discomfiting, imaginatively ripe, yet ruthlessly efficient” and asserts: “Simply put—and I do not say this lightly— Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”"

"This play on the ‘cursed movie’ trope by the author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts sees the only surviving cast member from a 1990s arthouse slasher movie sign on to guide a remake of the film, which became a cult classic. But the project soon turns out to be more complicated than imagined, and the actor less reliable. Intricately plotted, featuring both a dual timeline and a screenplay-within-a-novel, this is a clever, fun read full of twists that, like I Was a Teenage Slasher, will appeal to the horror film buff with an intimate knowledge of the genre."