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!
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
The lives of three women weave together across centuries in the dazzling new book from the Granta Best of Young British Novelist and author of All the Birds, Singing
Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has always borne witness to the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries, the fates of three women are inextricably linked to this place and to one another.
Sarah, accused of being a witch, is fleeing for her life.
Ruth, in the aftermath of the Second World War, is navigating a new marriage and the strange waters of the local community.
Six decades later, Viv, still mourning the death of her father, is cataloguing Ruth’s belongings in the now-empty house.
As each woman’s story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that their choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men who seek to control them. But in sisterhood there is also the possibility of survival and a new way of life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with love and fury–a devastating indictment of violence against women and an empowering portrait of their resilience through the ages.
Published September 1st 2020 by Pantheon Books | Amazon | Goodreads
The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry
When people go missing in the sleepy town of Smith’s Hollow, the only clue to their fate comes when a teenager starts having terrifying visions, in a chilling horror novel from national bestselling author Christina Henry.
When the bodies of two girls are found torn apart in the town of Smiths Hollow, Lauren is surprised, but she also expects that the police won’t find the killer. After all, the year before her father’s body was found with his heart missing, and since then everyone has moved on. Even her best friend, Miranda, has become more interested in boys than in spending time at the old ghost tree, the way they used to when they were kids.
So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging the remains of the girls through the woods, she knows she can’t just do nothing. Not like the rest of her town. But as she draws closer to answers, she realizes that the foundation of her seemingly normal town might be rotten at the center. And that if nobody else stands for the missing, she will.
Published September 8th 2020 by Berkley Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Ruby by Nina Allan
Ruby tells the story of Ruby Castle told in snapshots and fleeting glimpses and secret histories, in tales repeated and reinvented by those who fall under the horror film actress’s spell: her childhood sweetheart, an antiquarian bookseller with a passion for magical artifacts, the mistress of the poet who was once Castle’s lover, a young girl in a future Russia who dreams of the stars. Worlds collide, and the boundaries between the real and the fantastic begin to break down. Is Ruby Castle a living person or a collective fantasy? By the time the final page of Ruby is turned, the world that Castle created through her films has become dangerously indistinguishable from our own.
Published September 8th 2020 by Titan Books | Amazon | Goodreads
The Sentient by Nadia Afifi
Amira Valdez is a brilliant neuroscientist trying to put her past on a religious compound behind her. But when she’s assigned to a controversial cloning project, her dreams of working in space are placed in jeopardy. Using her talents as a reader of memories, Amira uncovers a conspiracy to stop the creation of the first human clone – at all costs.
As she unravels the mystery, Amira navigates a dangerous world populated by anti-cloning militants, scientists with hidden agendas, and a mysterious New Age movement. In the process, Amira uncovers an even darker secret, one that forces her to confront her own past.
Published September 8th 2020 by Flame Tree Press | Amazon | Goodreads
Shadowy Natures edited by Rebecca Rowland
With its twenty-one stories of serial killers and sociopaths, fixations and fetishes, breakdowns and bad decisions crafted by authors as diverse as their writing styles, Shadowy Natures leads fans of psychological horror down dark and treacherous roads to destinations they will be too unsettled to leave.
Under the tutelage of a charismatic caretaker, a young boy learns that the rules don’t apply to ‘exceptional’ people; under the blinders of parental love, a parent considers the after-effects of his daughter’s criminal exoneration.
One suburban dad finds himself inexplicably drawn to something he spies while walking the family pet, and another discovers buried compulsions awakened by his daughter’s dental deformity. Sorting through a deceased relative’s belongings, a family stumbles upon a horrific treasure, as a drifter with a dark secret wanders the Old West.
While a military officer spends his days delivering despair, a procrastinator is consumed by guilt after making a deadly mistake, and a businessman stumbles upon a bizarre family photo gallery.
Post-partum paranoia and isolation threaten one mother’s sanity until an outside threat pushes her over the edge while another mother picks at her son’s psychological scabs until he scrambles for release.
Urban blight bears down on a convenience store owner; a middle-aged man takes a terminally ill acquaintance captive to avenge his lover’s death; a depressed suburban housewife makes a strange new friend, and a neglected teen finds solace and inspiration in a vicious classmate’s company.
When her brother moves back into the family home, a woman becomes consumed by what he leaves behind; when a man disappears, his sister considers the warning signs he may have been leaving since childhood. One couple abandons urban life for the isolating wilderness while another plays a dangerous game, hoping to rekindle their relationship.
While one son revisits the scene of his father’s horrific crime spree, another returns home to ponder his family’s well-hidden secret.
From unique twists on traditional terror tropes to fresh frights found in the most innocuous of places, these tales will surprise and unnerve even the most veteran horror fans.
Expected publication: September 10th 2020 by Dark Ink Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Horrid by Katrina Leno
From the author of You Must Not Miss comes a haunting contemporary horror novel that explores themes of mental illness, rage, and grief, twisted with spine-chilling elements of Stephen King and Agatha Christie.
Following her father’s death, Jane North-Robinson and her mom move from sunny California to the dreary, dilapidated old house in Maine where her mother grew up. All they want is a fresh start, but behind North Manor’s doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling more alone…and more tormented.
As the cold New England autumn arrives, and Jane settles in to her new home, she finds solace in old books and memories of her dad. She steadily begins making new friends, but also faces bullying from the resident “bad seed,” struggling to tamp down her own worst nature in response. Jane’s mom also seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but she won’t reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the “storage room” her mom has kept locked isn’t for storage at all–it’s a little girl’s bedroom, left untouched for years and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears….
Is it grief? Mental illness? Or something more…horrid?
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | Amazon | Goodreads
If Ur Stabby by Kaz Windness
Who’s positively magical and ready for sunshine, giggles, and sliding down rainbows? Not Stabby! Meet the world’s surliest unicorn. This stab-happy unicorn is a fan-favorite character from “Mother Goth Rhymes” (www.mothergothrhymes.com Hermes Press, Halloween 2020) and now he’s getting his own book! “If UR Stabby” follows Stabby as he deals with life’s challenges the only way he knows how―horn first.
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 by Hermes Press | Amazon
The Orphan of Cemetery Hill by Hester Fox
The dead won’t bother you if you don’t give them permission.
Boston, 1844.
Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.
As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby’s gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.
Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the “Resurrection Men.”
In the end, Tabby’s gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Graydon House | Amazon | Goodreads
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
Expected publication: September 17th 2020 by Bloomsbury | Amazon | Goodreads
Revelations by Elizabeth Hartl
Fear is that unpleasant feeling of danger looming, either real or perceived. It could be the monster under the bed. It could be the contents of a graveyard. It could be your neighbor. It could be the people you trust. In this book, fear is: The dark. A vacation. Your neighbors. Your loved ones. Fear can teach us valuable lessons necessary for our survival. Are you ready for yours?
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Millennial Drowning Press | Amazon | Goodreads
Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee
After watching her circle of friends seemingly fade away, Lora is determined to still have fun on her own, so when a tea party leads Lora to discovering Alexa, the ghost that haunts her house, they soon become best friends.
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Random House Graphic | Amazon | Goodreads
You Are Invited by Sarah A. Denzil
“There are those who claim the ghosts walking the corridors of Sfântul Mihail are not ghosts at all.”
During a midnight journey snaking through the Carpathian Mountains, these are the words whispered to Cath Fenwick. It is the warning she will later wish she’d taken more seriously.
When Cath receives her invitation to The Event–a monetised retreat for social media influencers–she can’t believe her luck. Irene Jobert is the most famous influencer in the world, and now Cath will be one of the five participants chosen to stay with Irene in a renovated Transylvanian monastery.
The catch? Their every move will be live-streamed to millions of people around the world. Patrons pay for constant access to their favourite social media stars: Irene, the model, Nathan, the gamer, Jules, the blogger, Daniel, the fitness guru and Cath, the writer. Nestled halfway up a mountain, surrounded by forests teeming with nature, the five are isolated, with nothing but the internet to connect them to the world. That is, until eagle-eyed live-stream followers all around the globe notice a sixth participant. A dark figure lurking in the background. Who–or what–is in the monastery with them?
Wolves roam the nearby forests. Shadows haunt the long corridors of Sfântul Mihail. Slowly, five lonely people begin to lose their minds. You are invited to The Event.
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 | Amazon | Goodreads
Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
Nina LaCour delivers another emotional knockout with Watch Over Me, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the Printz Award-winning We Are Okay.
Mila is used to being alone. Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.
But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.
Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.
Watch Over Me is another stunner from Printz Award-Winning author Nina LaCour, whose empathetic, lyrical prose is at the heart of this modern ghost story of resilience and rebirth.
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Dutton Books for Young Readers | Amazon | Goodreads
Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
Nina LaCour delivers another emotional knockout with Watch Over Me, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the Printz Award-winning We Are Okay.
Mila is used to being alone. Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.
But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.
Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.
Watch Over Me is another stunner from Printz Award-Winning author Nina LaCour, whose empathetic, lyrical prose is at the heart of this modern ghost story of resilience and rebirth.
Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Dutton Books for Young Readers | Amazon | Goodreads
Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre edited by Alison Peirse
“But women were never out there making horror films, that’s why they are not written about – you can’t include what doesn’t exist.”
“There are really, very few women horror filmmakers working today, that’s why so few are coming up.”
“Women are just not that interested in making horror films.”
“How can you be a woman and be a fan of horror?”
This is what you get when you are a woman working in horror, whether as a writer, academic, festival programmer or filmmaker. These assumptions are based on decades of flawed scholarly, critical and industrial thinking about the genre. Women Make Horror sets right these misconceptions. Women have always been making horror, they have always been an audience for the genre, and today, as this book reveals, women academics, critics and filmmakers alike remain committed to a film genre that offers almost unlimited opportunities for exploring and deconstructing social and cultural constructions of gender, femininity, sexuality and the body.
Women Make Horror is the first book-length study of women filmmakers in horror film, the first all-women edited book on horror film, and the first book to call out the male-bias in written histories of horror and then to illuminate precisely how, and where, these histories are lacking. It re-evaluates existing literature on the history of horror film, on women practitioners in the film industry and approaches to undertaking film industries research. It establishes new approaches for studying women practitioners and illuminates their unexamined contribution to the formation and evolution of the horror genre. The book focuses on women directors and screenwriters but also acknowledges the importance of women producers, editors and cinematographers. It explores narrative and experimental cinema, short, anthology and feature-filmmaking, and offers case studies of North American, Latin American, European, East Asian and Australian filmmakers, films and festivals.
Women Make Horror is designed to not only engage and inspire dialogue between the academy, filmmakers, industry gatekeepers, festival programmers and horror film fans. With this book we can transform how we think about women filmmakers and genre.
Expected publication: September 17th 2020 by Rutgers University Press | Amazon | Goodreads
Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances by Lisa Morton
Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism, when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by “spirit rappings;” Daniel Dunglas Home, the “greatest medium of all time;” Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. A hugely entertaining contribution from the supernaturally adept Lisa Morton, Calling the Spirits begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?
Expected publication: September 26th 2020 by Reaktion Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
A smart, imaginative, and evocative novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower—for good or ill—is a properly executed spreadsheet.
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?
As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one.
So, of course, then she gets laid off.
With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.
Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.
It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.
A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 by HarperCollins | Amazon | Goodreads
The Low, Low Woods (Hill House Comics #3) by Carmen Maria Machado
When your memories are stolen, what would you give to remember? Follow El and Vee as they search for answers to the questions everyone else forgot.
Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, is plagued by a mysterious illness that eats away at the memories of those affected by it. El and Octavia are two best friends who find themselves the newest victims of this disease after waking up in a movie theater with no memory of the past few hours.
As El and Vee dive deeper into the mystery behind their lost memories, they realize the stories of their town hold more dark truth than they could’ve imagined. It’s up to El and Vee to keep their town from falling apart…to keep the world safe from Shudder-to-Think’s monsters.
Collects issues # 1-6.
Expected publication: September 29th 2020 by DC Black Label | Amazon | Goodreads
The Night She Fell by Jennifer Soucy
Falling in love or falling into darkness? For some, it’s the same journey.
Coralena del Prado wishes to become a witch like her mama, but her ancestral magic still hasn’t activated. She fears she’ll be stuck forever as Mama’s assistant at Cornucopia, their Mediterranean cafe located in Greenwich, the home of Connecticut’s elite. But all that changes when a mysterious man from their past returns, sparking more than Cori’s late-blooming magic.
Hayden Colburn, Greenwich’s elusive bachelor prince, fled his life of privilege to become a restaurateur in nearby New York City. He’s everything Cori wants and, after one brilliant night, she’s ready to surrender. Until Mama shares a secret about the Colburns which shatters their peaceful home and Cori’s dreams of love.
Evil lurks beneath Greenwich, spawned by the Colburns and their powerful friends. Mama begs her to stay away, but Cori can’t ignore their crimes. She plans a sneak attack, armed with only her temperamental magic—a power made volatile by her conflicting emotions for Hayden, a man she’s sworn to hate who stubbornly fights to win her heart.
Cori vows to destroy her mother’s enemies. She’ll weaponize her magic even if the act shatters every natural law, a sacrilege which might damn her soul. But none of that matters if it means saving her beloved mother from a pack of humans more wicked than any mythological monster.
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 | Goodreads
The Sadness of Spirits: Stories by Aimee Pogson
What power does misery play in daily life?
In this sorrowful yet intriguing collection of stories, Aimee Pogson explores journeys of suffering through magical realism. A preschool teacher contends with the stream of salmon that keep appearing on her windowsill, in her closet, tucked in her shoes. An invisible boy swallows nails, buttons, and tree bark in a misguided attempt to grow stronger. Spirits cling to a Ouija board, restlessly hoping that someone will remove it from the closet and ask them a question. A young girl who has an existential crisis burns her Barbie dolls at the stake. And a short, dancing man manipulates the melody of molecules in an attempt to bring his loved ones back to life.
While sadness weighs heavy in The Sadness of Spirits, Pogson’s writing provokes strong emotions, leaving the reader with hope and admiration as the characters are awakened to the nuance and possibility melancholy can bring.
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 by Indiana University Press | Amazon | Goodreads
White Fox by Sara Faring
After their world-famous actor mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Manon and Thaïs left their remote Mediterranean island home—sent away by their pharma-tech tycoon father. Opposites in every way, the sisters drifted apart in their grief. Yet their mother’s unfinished story still haunts them both, and they can’t put to rest the possibility that she is still alive.
Lured home a decade later, Manon and Thaïs discover their mother’s legendary last work, long thought lost: White Fox, a screenplay filled with enigmatic metaphors. The clues in this dark fairytale draw them deep into the island’s surreal society, into the twisted secrets hidden by their glittering family, to reveal the truth about their mother—and themselves.
Expected publication: September 22nd 2020 by Imprint | Amazon | Goodreads
Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women by Lee Murray
Almond-eyed celestial, the filial daughter, the perfect wife. Quiet, submissive, demure. In Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, Southeast Asian writers of horror both embrace and reject these traditional roles in a unique collection of stories which dissect their experiences of ‘otherness’, be it in the colour of their skin, the angle of their cheekbones, the things they dare to write, or the places they have made for themselves in the world.
Black Cranes is a dark and intimate exploration of what it is to be a perpetual outsider.
Featuring 14 stories by Nadia Bulkin, Grace Chan, Rin Chupeco, Elaine Cuyegkeng, Geneve Flynn, Gabriela Lee, Rena Mason, Lee Murray, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Christina Sng, and a foreword by Alma Katstu.
Expected publication: September 26th 2020 by Omnium Gatherum | Amazon | Goodreads
The Nesting by C.J. Cooke
The woods are creeping in on a nanny and two young girls in this chilling modern Gothic thriller.
Architect Tom Faraday is determined to finish the high-concept, environmentally friendly home he’s building in Norway–in the same place where he lost his wife, Aurelia, to suicide. It was their dream house, and he wants to honor her with it.
Lexi Ellis takes a job as his nanny and immediately falls in love with his two young daughters, especially Gaia. But something feels off in the isolated house nestled in the forest along the fjord. Lexi sees mysterious muddy footprints inside the home. Aurelia’s diary appears in Lexi’s room one day. And Gaia keeps telling her about seeing the terrifying Sad Lady. . . .
Soon Lexi suspects that Aurelia didn’t kill herself and that they are all in danger from something far more sinister lurking around them.
Expected publication: September 29th 2020 by Berkley Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Have we missed any September 2020 LOHF titles you are excited about? Let us know in the comments!
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