Each month the Ladies of Horror Fiction team posts all of the books we are aware of that will be releasing during that month. If you are involved in the process of publishing a horror book written by a female author, please reach out to us and let us know so we can help to spotlight the book’s release!
No One’s Home by D.M Pulley
For fans of The Haunting of Hill House comes a dark tale of a mansion haunted by a legacy of tragedy and a family trapped by lies.
Margot and Myron Spielman move to a new town, looking for a fresh start and an escape from the long shadow of their past. But soon after they buy Rawlingswood, a foreclosed mansion rumored to be haunted, they realize they’re in for more of the same…or worse.
After a renovation fraught with injuries and setbacks, the Spielmans move in to the century-old house, and their problems quickly escalate. The home’s beautiful facade begins to crumble around them when their teenage son uncovers disturbing details of Rawlingswood’s history—a history of murder, betrayal, and financial ruin. The Spielmans’ own shameful secrets and lies become harder to hide as someone or something inside the house watches their every move.
As tensions build between the family members, the home’s dark history threatens to repeat itself. Margot and Myron must confront their own ghosts and Rawlingswood’s buried past before the house becomes their undoing.
Published September 1st 2019 by Thomas & Mercer | Goodreads | Amazon
The Bone Cutters by Renee S. DeCamillis
Dory wakes up in the padded room of a psychiatric hospital with no recollection of how she wound up there. She soon finds out she’s been Blued-Papered—involuntarily committed. When she is sent to the wrong counseling group, she discovers a whole new world of drug addicts she’d never known existed. When she learns that those grotesque scars they all have are from cutting into their own bodies, it makes her skin itch. Why do they do it?—They get high off bone dust. They carve down to the bone, then chisel and scrape until they get that free drug. When they realize Dory’s never been “dusted”, she becomes their target. After all, dust from a “Freshie” is the most intense high, and pain free—for the carver.
By the end of that first meeting Dory is running scared, afraid of being “dusted”, though the psych. hospital staff doesn’t believe a word she says. She’s delusional—at least that’s what they tell her. They end up sending her to that same counseling group every day, though Dory knows that all those junkie cutters want is what’s inside of her, and they won’t give up until they get what they’re after.
Like Girl Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, The Bone Cutters is one woman’s dark and surreal experience with a madness that is not necessarily her own.
Published September 1st 2019 by Eraserhead Press | Goodreads | Amazon
Metamorphosis by Claire Fitzpatrick
Madeline will never become a woman. William will never become a man. Does June deserve to be human? Does Lilith deserve a heart?
Seventeen stories. Seventeen tales of terror.
If imperfection is crucial to a society’s survival, what makes a monster?
Published September 2nd 2019 by Ifwg Publishing Australia | Goodreads | Amazon
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 11 edited by Ellen Datlow
For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the tenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night.
Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as:
- Neil Gaiman
- Kim Stanley Robinson
- Stephen King
- Linda Nagata
- Laird Barron
- Margo Lanagan
- And many others
With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.
Expected publication: September 3rd 2019 by Night Shade Books | Goodreads | Amazon
Catfish Lullaby by AC Wise
Lewis is a town of secrets.
There have long been rumors of something unnatural in the swamp, and more than one person has gone missing. Many blame the Royce family while others believe in a local monster, rising from the dark waters.
As a child, Caleb witnessed something inexplicable the night the Royce place mysteriously burned to the ground. As an adult, Caleb returns to take over his father’s role as sheriff, and the long shadow of the Royce family returns to haunt him. Caleb struggles to solve an eerily familiar crime and finds himself face to face with another old mystery–the legend of Catfish John.
Expected publication: September 3rd 2019 by Broken Eye Books | Goodreads | Amazon
Tinfoil Butterfly by Rachel Eve Moulton
The Shining meets About a Boy in this electrifying debut about a troubled young woman and a lonely boy facing their demons in the frozen Black Hills.
Emma is hitchhiking across the United States, trying to outrun a violent, tragic past, when she meets Lowell, the hot-but-dumb driver she hopes will take her as far as the Badlands. But Lowell is not as harmless as he seems, and a vicious scuffle leaves Emma bloody and stranded in an abandoned town in the Black Hills with an out-of-gas van, a loaded gun, and a snowstorm on the way.
The town is eerily quiet and Emma takes shelter in a diner, where she stumbles across Earl, a strange little boy in a tinfoil mask who steals her gun before begging her to help him get rid of “George.” As she is pulled deeper into Earl’s bizarre, menacing world, the horrors of Emma’s past creep closer, and she realizes she can’t run forever.
Tinfoil Butterfly is a seductively scary, chilling exploration of evil–how it sneaks in under your skin, flaring up when you least expect it, how it throttles you and won’t let go. The beauty of Rachel Eve Moulton’s ferocious, harrowing, and surprisingly moving debut is that it teaches us that love can do that, too.
Expected publication: September 10th 2019 by MCD X Fsg Originals | Goodreads | Amazon
The Babysitters Coven – Kate Williams
Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this funny, action-packed novel about a coven of witchy babysitters who realize their calling to protect the innocent and save the world from an onslaught of evil.
Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it.
And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree.
Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club?
The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: “Find the babysitters. Love, Mom.”
Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.
Expected publication: September 17th 2019 by Delacorte Press | Goodreads | Amazon
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson
Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.
Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.
Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.
Expected publication: September 17th 2019 by Quirk Books | Goodreads | Amazon
The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs by Celine Loup
After moving into a new home and giving birth to her first child, a woman worries that a supernatural force is haunting her child’s nursery, and has corrupted her husband into a creature intent on harming them both.
Emma is excited to start a family in her new home, but after her child’s birth she finds her world turning upside-down. The infant cries like it’s scared of something, or someone, and Emma’s sleepless nights quickly drive a wedge between her and her husband, who seems uncharacteristically detached. When Emma begins to see strange things in the house, the line between reality and fantasy blurs and her grasp of what’s real and what’s not becomes even more clouded. Is something unnatural haunting the nursery? And what if it also affected her husband, who ventured up into the attic when they first arrived…
Inspired by the works of Shirley Jackson and Ira Levin, Celine Loup’s The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs weaves a tale of horror and suspense that captures the isolation of postpartum depression, while exploring the very real fears associated with new motherhood.
Expected publication: September 24th 2019 by Archaia | Goodreads | Amazon
The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht
Debut author Jennifer Giesbrecht paints a darkly compelling fantasy of revenge in The Monster of Elendhaven, a dark fantasy about murder, a monster, and the magician who love both.
The city of Elendhaven sulks on the edge of the ocean. Wracked by plague, abandoned by the South, stripped of industry and left to die. But not everything dies so easily. A thing without a name stalks the city, a thing shaped like a man, with a dark heart and long pale fingers yearning to wrap around throats. A monster who cannot die. His frail master sends him out on errands, twisting him with magic, crafting a plan too cruel to name, while the monster’s heart grows fonder and colder and more cunning.
These monsters of Elendhaven will have their revenge on everyone who wronged the city, even if they have to burn the world to do it.
Expected publication: September 24th 2019 by Tor.com | Goodreads | Amazon
The House of Bones by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Seventeen-year-old Aderyn (“Ryn”) only cares about two things: her family, and her family’s graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don’t always stay dead.
The risen corpses are known as “bone houses,” and legend says that they’re the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it about Ellis that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good?
Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves.
Expected publication: September 24th 2019 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | Goodreads | Amazon
Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister–at all costs.
Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her–and who won’t make it out of the woods?
It’s been exactly one year since Sara’s sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn’t know whether her former friends no longer like her…or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to “play the game” and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca–before she’s lost forever. And even though she’s hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends–and their cameras–following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side.
Expected publication: September 24th 2019 by Viking Books for Young Readers | Goodreads | Amazon
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
Simmering in Patagonian myth, The Tenth Girl is a gothic psychological thriller with a haunting twist.
At the very southern tip of South America looms an isolated finishing school. Legend has it that the land will curse those who settle there. But for Mavi—a bold Buenos Aires native fleeing the military regime that took her mother—it offers an escape to a new life as a young teacher to Argentina’s elite girls.
Mavi tries to embrace the strangeness of the imposing house—despite warnings not to roam at night, threats from an enigmatic young man, and rumors of mysterious Others. But one of Mavi’s ten students is missing, and when students and teachers alike begin to behave as if possessed, the forces haunting this unholy cliff will no longer be ignored.
One of these spirits holds a secret that could unravel Mavi’s existence. In order to survive she must solve a cosmic mystery—and then fight for her life.
Expected publication: September 24th 2019 by Imprint | Goodreads | Amazon
The Apocalyptic Mannequin By Stephanie Wytovich
Expected publication: September 26, 2019 by Raw Dog Screaming Press | Amazon
Lesath by A.M. Kherbash
Locked in his dark cell, Greg lay awake in bed, fidgeting with the small cassette recorder, pressing the rewind and stop buttons to listen to the heavy click and spring-loaded clank that initiated and punctuated the faint whirring mechanics. He knew well enough no one was going to come looking for him―not while he was in between jobs, living in a four-door pickup truck, and had traveled to an undisclosed location without telling anyone.
What brought him here were rumors of an abandoned building that was said to be part of a black site―rumors that were circulated amongst truckers and drifters: some exaggerated the sinister aspect of the place, detailing with morbid relish the methods of enhanced interrogation that were being developed or deployed there, while others assumed the contrarian position and downplayed the horrors, if not downright dismissed the whole story as hyperbole.
Questionable as the lead was, the story seemed too good for an amateur journalist like Greg to pass up. All the same, he did not expect there would be some truth to those rumors, that the building is not quite derelict as he had imagined. And that, thanks to a case of mistaken identity, he was now incarcerated there as an inmate.
Greg stopped the rewinding mechanism when he detected rustling and soft thumps coming through the ceiling vent―or thought he did, since the quirky nature of unidentified noise is that it usually ceases whenever one stops to listen. Like a living body, no running building is without its small, unaccountable bumps and muffled clanks; yet even if they’re mostly benign noise, at night, they’re magnified by the ever-present hush, and their unfamiliarity never fails to inflame the imagination of the sleepless newcomer.
LESATH is a psychological horror that pays tribute to gothic fiction.
Expected publication: September 30th 2019 | Goodreads | Amazon
Have we missed any September 2019 LOHF titles you are excited about? Let us know in the comments!
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