The Best New Horror books in 2023

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward



In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the killer that stalked their small New England town. Of the body they found, the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of sky, Wilder's one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound.
This book will be Wilder's revenge on Sky, a man who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky's signature green ink and events in his manuscript start to chime eerily with the present. Is Sky still haunting him? Did Wilder have more to do with Sky's death than he admits? And who is the woman drowning in the cove, whom no-one else can see? 
No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to wonder: is he writing the book, or is the book writing him?


Get your copy of Looking Glass Sound here at Amazon
Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

Don't Fear the Reaper is the page-turning sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones.
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released form prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted serial killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.
Dark Mill South's Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019,a Thursday.
Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over. 
Get your copy of Don't Fear the Reaper here at Amazon
The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay


A haunting collection of short fiction from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club, A Head Full of Ghosts, and The Cabin at the End of the World.
Paul Tremblay has won widespread acclaim for illuminating the dark horrors of the mind in novels and stories that push the boundaries of storytelling itself. The fifteen pieces in this brilliant collection, The Beast You Are, are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart.



Get your copy of The Beast You Are here at Amazon

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw




A sensuous and strange horror novella full of creeping dread and delicious gore, twisting mermaid myths into something sharp and dangerous, and hungry, for fans of Christina Henry, Carmen Maria Machado and Eric LaRocca.
After the murder of her husband and the fall of his empire, a mermaid and her plague doctor companion escape into the wilderness. Deep in the woods, they stumble across a village where children hunt each other for sport, sacrificing one of their own at the behest of the surgeons they call "the saints." These saints play god with their magic, harvesting the best bits of the children for themselves and piecing the sacrifices back together again. 
To save the children from their fates, the plague doctor must confront their past, and the mermaid must embrace the darkest parts of her true nature.
Get your copy of The Salt Grows Heavy at Amazon
The Drift by C. J. Tudor


A crashed coach full of students.A stuck cable car full of strangers.An isolated chalet full of friends.A killer snowstorm outside.Inside one group, a killer.But which one?And why is no rescue coming?How did they become trapped?And what were they all trying to escape?
Get your copy of The Drift here at Amazon

Dead Water by C. A. Fletcher


A water-borne blight hits a small community on a remote Scottish Island. The residents are a mix of island-born and newcomers seeking a slower life away from the modern world; all have their own secrets, some much a darker than others. Some claim the illness may be a case of mass hysteria - or even a long buried curse - but when the ferry service fails and phone towers go down, inconvenience grows into nightmarish ordeal as the outwardly harmonious fabric of the community is irreversibly torn apart.


A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
Dark and twisted family roots threaten to strangle their home's foundations in this chilling haunted house novel from the award-winning master of modern horror, T. Kingfisher.
Samantha Montgomery pulls into the driveway of her family home to find a massive black vulture perched on the mailbox, staring at the house.
Inside, everything has changed. Gone is the eclectic warmth Sam expects; instead the walls are a sterile white. Now, it's very important to say grace before dinner, and her mother won't hear a word against Sam's long-dead and little-missed grandmother, who was the first to put down roots in this small southern town.
The longer Sam stays. the stranger things get. And every day, more vultures circle overhead...
Get your copy of A House with Good Bones here at Amazon
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno Garcia




From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism; a dark thriller about a curse that haunts a legendary lost film- and awakens one woman's hidden powers.
Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in 90's Mexico   City. And she's all-but-invisible to her best friend Tristan, a charming if faded soap opera start, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristan discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.
Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristan to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristan begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend...
As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristan might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of of movies...

Get your copy of Silver Nitrate here at Amazon

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro





The story of a woman haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona as she unravels the dark secrets of her family history in this ravishing and provocative horror novel from the author of Alien: Vasquez.
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. But they cannot see what Alejandra has become; a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her. Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly visions appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.
When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins to explore her family's history, starting with the biological mother she only recently rediscovered. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.
Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.
But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers - and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever.
Get your copy of The Haunting of Alejandra here at Amazon
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn't want t leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn't want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father's academic career and her mother's lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn't want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Mostly, she doesn't want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. But she'll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it'll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
Some houses don't want to be sold, and their home has other plans for them...
 
Get your copy of How to Sell a Haunted House here at Amazon
The Sum of Your Flesh by Beverley Lee

Haven Ford arrives in the small village of Mortimer West on the back of a troubled voicemail asking for his help. But the baggage he carries is far more than the rucksack slung over his shoulder.
Rafferty Henderson has lived his whole life in the gatehouse cottage at the edge of the woods. It's a safe space for a boy with strange eating habits, until his brother's death sends his whole world spiralling into a twisted nest of persecution and unanswered questions.
Meredith Evans is a woman returning to her roots, but this is no cosy revisit. This is a return to lay the nightmare of her childhood to rest. Or at least to gain a better understanding of it.
When graves start to collapse in the cemetery and the whispers from the village become accusations against Rafferty, Haven finds himself in the midst of an unfolding horror with its seeds firmly planted in the past - a past that will take him down with it, a past that wants to drown him.
For beneath this village lies a terrible secret. A secret that refuses to die. A secret discarded over a hundred years ago by the sole survivor of a doomed Arctic voyage, a man whose blood flows in Rafferty Henderson's veins.
Get your copy of The Sum of Your Flesh here at Amazon