Not sure who you ought to read? Here’s a list of books by a bunch of excellent horror authors. All links lead to my reviews of said books, and there are enough books here that you could read one a day for the whole month and still have some left over!
Gemma Amor’s Girl On Fire–a very personalized apocalyptic novel. Her rural horror novel is White Pines. She also has a collection of short stories called Till the Score Is Paid, and a book called Dear Laura that was very well received.
Sara Tantlinger’s To Be Devoured is bloody and beautiful.
Hailey Piper’s The Worm and His Kings, an eerie tale of identity and cosmic horror. Her Benny Rose the Cannibal King is an excellent urban legend/slasher story!
Tananarive Due’s The Between, an intriguing knot of a story about a man who almost died.
Darcy Coates, Parasite is a sci-fi horror story about some nasty aliens.
Red Lagoe gives us this excellent collection of short horror stories: Lucid Screams.
Carol Gore’s Infested is a great rural, monster insect horror novel.
Premee Mohamed’s Beneath the Rising is a borderline horror book, more YA adventure, but a wonderful skein of cosmic horror underlies the whole thing.
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties is an excellent collection of short stories.
Angela Archer’s The Ladderman is an odd but intriguing urban legend tale.
S.H. Cooper gives us a short story collection called All That’s Fair, as well as another called The Corpse Garden and From Twisted Roots. She also has a cosmic horror novel, The Festering Ones, that has one of my favorite cosmic horror story endings.
Sara Gran’s Come Closer is a great possession novel.
C.V. Hunt’s Halloween Fiend is a good read at any time of year.
Laurel Hightower’s Crossroads is poignant, heartbreaking, and tragic. Her Whispers In the Dark is eerie!
The anthology Under Her Black Wings brings together short stories from an array of female authors!
Sonora Taylor’s Seeing Things is a wonderful ghost story. She also has some anthologies, such as Wither and Other Stories, Little Paranoias, and The Crow’s Gift and Other Tales. My favorite of her work is Without Condition, a very unusual serial killer tale with overtones of romance.
Jessica Guess’s Cirque Berserk is one of my favorite takes on the classic slasher genre!
Stephanie Rabig’s Playing Possum is an absolutely delightful horror, humor, LGBTQ+ work! How can you go wrong with were-possums?
Kate Alice Marshall’s Rules For Vanishing is a really interesting YA cosmic horror novel!
Deborah Sheldon’s Body Farm Z is a story of a zombie outbreak at a body farm!
Mary SanGiovanni has a ton of excellent horror novels, but you might start with her Kathy Ryan stories, such as the excellent Chills.
T. Kingfisher (who writes beautifully in several genres) brings us The Twisted Ones, a great rural horror novel. The Hollow Places is another wonderful horror read from her.
Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Rust Maidens is slow and bleak.
S.P. Miskowski’s Knock Knock is a part of her excellent Skillute Cycle of small-town horror.
I also recommend Cass Khaw’s “Persons Non Grata” cosmic horror tales: Hammers on Bone and A Song for Quiet. Very lyrical and amazing!
Ania Ahlborn has written the excellent novels Brother, If You See Her, and The Shuddering.
The multiple-author anthology We Are Wolves–all stories by women and non-binary authors, and all about women–is incredible!
T.C. Parker’s Saltblood is an excellent blend of horror with a near-future sci-fi prison story.
My first Kathe Koja book, The Cipher, is fascinating! I enjoyed it more than Skin, but both were very well-written.
Christine Morgan’s Lakehouse Infernal is more toward the “extreme” horror end of the spectrum than I usually read, but it’s so much fun!
Here are a few thrillers for balance, since sometimes I see thrillers lumped in with horror and sometimes I don’t:
Skyla Dawn Cameron’s The Silent Places, in which a woman with a secret past comes face to face with it (heavy theme of domestic abuse).
Ali Seay’s Go Down Hard, in which two serial killers discover they live next door to each other.
Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe, in which we see the lengths a sociopath will go to in order to get her revenge. (Soon I’ll also be posting a review of the excellent sequel, “False Step.”)
Gaby Triana’s Island of Bones is a great haunted house story.
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer is just as intriguing as it sounds!
Darby Kane’s Pretty Little Wife features a non-neurotypical heroine.
I hope these give you a few ideas for books you might read–not just in February, but at any time. I know I’ve missed plenty, so if you have more to suggest, add them in the comments!
Added later: Beverley Lee’s The Ruin of Delicate Things.
Leave a Reply