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 woman author, please reach out to us and let us know so we can help to spotlight the book’s release!
The Blood Prince of Langkasuka by Tutu Dutta
The monster is not always who you expect it to be… a reimagining of the Raja Bersiong legend; a coming-of-age story of an angst-ridden young man turning into a vampire, while confronted with a chilling murder-mystery.
Raja Perita Deria is a carefree and arrogant seventeen-year-old; and his story begins with a seemingly ordinary night out with his close friends. However, a chance encounter with a bewitchingly beautiful woman in an abandoned temple, almost ends his life and changes him irrevocably. After an incident involving the cook and a dish of bayam tainted with blood, he discovers that he needs blood to heal and for sustenance. As heir to the throne of Langkasuka, the prince is also caught in the larger political struggle surrounding the kingdom which is being watched by the two powers of 12th Century Southeast Asia – the Sri Vijaya Empire and the Khmer Empire. Sri Vijaya courts Langkasuka by offering the prince, the hand of a Sri Vijayan princess, while the Khmer Empire seems curiously aloof. To everyone’s surprise, Raja Perita is drawn to the princess, and agrees to marry her. However, a spate of violent deaths in the palace of Langkasuka point towards the prince and his close friends and Raja Perita is slowly driven to breaking point. When the most powerful shaman in the kingdom is murdered while attempting to commune with the Rice Spirit, the countryside is in an uproar. Her death sets off a witch hunt for a killer who could be a vampire… Could it be one of the prince’s beloved friends, or perhaps Raja Perita himself?
Published February 1st 2021 by Penguin Random House SEA | Amazon | Goodreads
The Ash House by Angharad Walker
An unsettling, gripping middle grade debut about searching for a sense of belonging in the wrong places, and the bravery it takes to defy those who seek to control us. This is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children meets Lord of the Flies for fans of Neil Gaiman and Holly Black.
When Eleven-year-old Sol arrives at the Ash House, desperate for a cure for his complex pain syndrome, he finds a community of strange children long abandoned by their mysterious Headmaster.
The children at the Ash House want the new boy to love their home as much as they do. They give him a name like theirs. They show him the dorms and tell him about the wonderful oasis that the Headmaster has created for them. But the new boy already has a name. Doesn’t he? At least he did before he walked through those gates…
This was supposed to be a healing refuge for children like him. Something between a school and a summer camp. With kids like him. With pain like his. But no one is allowed to get sick at the Ash House. NO ONE.
And then The Doctor arrives…
Strange things are about to happen at the mysterious Ash House. And the longer Sol spends on the mysterious grounds, the more he begins to forget who he is, the more the other children begin to distrust him, and the worse his pain becomes. But can he hold onto reality long enough to find an escape? And better yet, can he convince the others?
Published February 2nd 2021 by Chicken House | Amazon | Goodreads
The Project by Courtney Summers
Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo’s sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there’s more to the group than meets the eye. She’s spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.
When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what’s real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn’t know if she can afford not to.
Published February 2nd 2021 by Wednesday Books | Amazon | Goodreads
What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo
Rose Szabo’s thrilling debut is a dark and thrilling novel about a teen girl who returns home to her strange, wild family after years of estrangement, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls.
Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying incident, she goes to the only place she thinks is safe: the home she left behind. But when she gets there, she struggles to fit in with her monstrous relatives, who prowl the woods around the family estate and read fortunes in the guts of birds.
Eleanor finds herself desperately trying to hold the family together — in order to save them all, Eleanor must learn to embrace her family of monsters and tame the darkness inside her.
Exquisitely terrifying, beautiful, and strange, this fierce gothic fantasy will sink its teeth into you and never let go.
Published February 2nd 2021 by FSG | Amazon | Goodreads
The Dead Hours of Night by Lisa Tuttle
In a career spanning almost 50 years, Lisa Tuttle has proven herself a master of the weird tale, and now this new collection of twelve unsettling stories – some never previously collected – offers readers a chance to discover some of her finest work.
In ‘Replacements’, a woman adopts a monstrous pet, with unforeseen consequences. In ‘Born Dead’, a stillborn child mysteriously continues to grow just like a living one. ‘My Pathology’ (whose ending Thomas Tessier has cited as one of the best in the history of horror) explores the sinister results of a couple’s alchemical experiments. And a book lover in ‘The Book That Finds You’ has her life changed in strange ways by the discovery of a rare horror book at a second-hand bookshop. In these weird and chilling tales, Tuttle is at her diabolical best.
This edition features an introduction by Lisa Kröger, and each story is specially introduced by the author.
Published February 2nd 2021 by Valancourt Books | Amazon | Goodreads
The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor
An unconventional vicar moves to a remote corner of the English countryside, only to discover a community haunted by death and disappearances both past and present–and intent on keeping its dark secrets–in this explosive, unsettling thriller from acclaimed author C. J. Tudor.
Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself.
Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. Instead, Jack finds a town mired in secrecy and a strange welcome package: an old exorcism kit and a note quoting scripture. “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.”
The more Jack and daughter Flo get acquainted with the town and its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into their rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo is troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel, it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.
But uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village’s bloody past, and no one trusts an outsider.
Expected publication: February 9th 2021 by Ballantine Books | Amazon | Goodreads
A Flood of Posies by Tiffany Meuret
It’s 2025.
Sisters, Doris and Thea, exist worlds apart, despite living within a few miles of one another. Doris with her regular home and regular husband and regular job, and Thea slinking along the edges of society, solitary and invisible. When a storm of biblical proportions strikes, the wayward sisters are begrudgingly forced together as the rain waters rise, each attempting to survive both the flood and each other.
One year later, Thea—now calling herself Sestra—floats throughout a ravaged, flood soaked world. Her former life drowned beneath metric tons of water, she and her only companion, Robert, battle starvation, heatstroke, and the monstrous creatures called Posies that appeared alongside the flood. When they run across what they assume to be an abandoned tugboat, their journey takes a new turn, and the truth about the flood and the monsters seems more intricately linked to Thea’s past then she may realize.
Expected publication: February 9th 2021 by Black Spot Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap
“Am I dead?” Mebuyen sighs. She was hoping the girl would not ask. Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new novella, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” to the terrifying tension of the urban legend “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez.”
Expected publication: February 9th 2021 by Small Beer Press | Amazon | Goodreads
Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) by Laurell K. Hamilton
Rafael, king of the wererats, must fight to the death to defend his crown. He wants Anita Blake, one of his closest allies, with him as he faces an opponent unlike any he’s faced before. He will ask Anita to risk everything to be at his side.…
But some of the wererats fear that Rafael depends too much on Anita and her ties to the vampires. They believe that there is only room in America for one supernatural king, and Rafael will turn them into nothing more than food for the bloodsuckers.
Among his enemies, a new challenger has arisen who is younger, hungrier, and has dark secrets that could destroy both the wererats and the vampires. Rafael will go into the magical heart of his people to find the power and violence that he needs to save them all, or die trying.
Expected publication: February 9th 2021 by Berkley Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo
This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.
Expected publication: February 9th 2021 by Agora Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Daughters of Darkness Kindle Edition by Stephanie Ellis, Alyson Faye, Theresa Derwin, Ruschelle Dillon
A quartet of established female horror writers from both sides of the Atlantic have joined supernatural forces to bring you – Daughters of Darkness – a publication from the women-run indie press Black Angel.
These stories will take you across the centuries, from Whitechapel to New Orleans, from dark humour to Gothic, weaving the weird with the macabre.
Within these pages, meet the myriad monsters these female writers have conjured, letting them loose to roam and cast long shadows.
Beware – this is only the beginning …
Expected publication: February 14th 2021 | Amazon
In That Endlessness, Our End edited by Gemma Files
COME CLOSER, FRIEND. LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.
Heard the one about the Airbnb that eats your dreams or the iron-crowned king who preys on his own bloodline from the air, still smoldering centuries after being burnt alive? How about the cloudy antique bottle you can wish your excess rage inside, or that crooked alley down which something waits to replace your disappointing child with a far more pleasant facsimile? We all know the truth, especially in times like these-in an anxiety-ridden, sleepless world such as ours, it’s only ever our very worst dreams that come true. Here streets empty out and people pull themselves apart like amoebas, breeding murderous doppelgangers from their own flesh; houses haunt, ideas possess and a cold and alien moon stares down, whispering that it’s time to spawn. New myths rise and ancient evils descend. From the seemingly mundane terrors of a city just like yours to all the most dark and distant places of a truly terrible universe, nothing is as it seems…not even that dimly-recalled cinematic memory you’ve been chasing all these years, the one you think might be just something you stumbled upon while flipping through channels after midnight. The one that still disturbs you enough to raise a cold sweat all over your body, whenever you try to will its details clear.
Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award-winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares-a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.
Expected publication: February 15th 2021 by Grimscribe Press | Amazon | Goodreads
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
The Echo Wife is a non-stop thrill ride, perfect for readers of Big Little Lies and enthusiasts of “Killing Eve” and “Westworld”
Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.
Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and the Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.
Expected publication: February 16th 2021 by Tor Books | Amazon | Goodreads
Holes in the Veil by Beth Overmyer
Having killed his lifelong enemy, Aidan Ingledark finds himself in possession of a map to the Questing Goblet, one of the Goblets Immortal that gives the drinker luck beyond measure. Meraude seeks this Goblet to wipe out magic-kind. Aidan and his traveling companion are determined to find it first but they must battle through illusion and doubt.
Jinn’s a Sightful seeking the Summoner. She wants to kill her mother, but her foresight ends in darkness. Can she enlist Aidan’s help and change her fate?
The threat of Meraude and her dominion are imminent in this sequel to The Goblets Immortal.
Expected publication: February 16th 2021 by Flame Tree Press | Amazon | Goodreads
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
EVERYONE’S IN DANGER. ANYONE COULD BE NEXT.
An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother’s recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept.
Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it’s beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous – as does her brother, Isaac.
And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin’s unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.
But no-one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they’re all in . . .
Expected publication: February 18th 2021 by Bantam Press | Amazon | Goodreads
The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book (Greenglass House #5) by Kate Milford
Nothing is what it seems and there’s always more than one side to the story as a group of strangers trapped in an inn slowly reveal their secrets…
The rain hasn’t stopped for a week, and the twelve guests of the Blue Vein Tavern are trapped by flooded roads and the rising Skidwrack River. Among them are a ship’s captain, tattooed twins, a musician, and a young girl traveling on her own. To pass the time, they begin to tell stories—each a different type of folklore—that eventually reveal more about their own secrets than they intended.
As the rain continues to pour down—an uncanny, unnatural amount of rain—the guests begin to realize that the entire city is in danger, and not just from the flood. But they have only their stories, and one another, to save them. Will it be enough?
Expected publication: February 23rd 2021 by Clarion Books | Amazon | Goodreads
The Russian Cage (Gunnie Rose #3) by Charlaine Harris
Picking up right where A Longer Fall left off, this thrilling third installment follows Lizbeth Rose as she takes on one of her most dangerous missions yet: rescuing her estranged partner, Prince Eli, from the Holy Russian Empire. Once in San Diego, Lizbeth is going to have to rely upon her sister Felicia, and her growing Grigori powers to navigate her way through this strange new world of royalty and deception in order to get Eli freed from jail where he’s being held for murder.
Russian Cage continues to ramp up the momentum with more of everything Harris’ readers adore her for with romance, intrigue, and a deep dive into the mysterious Holy Russian Empire.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse mysteries and Midnight, Texas trilogy) continues to ramp up the momentum with more of everything Harris’ readers adore her for with romance, intrigue and a deep dive into the mysterious Holy Russian Empire in the much loved Gunnie Rose series.
Expected publication: February 23rd 2021 by Gallery/Saga Press | Amazon | Goodreads
The Shadow War by Lindsay Smith
Inglourious Basterds meets Stranger Things in this dark and thrilling tale of power, shadow, and revenge set during World War II.
World War II is raging, and five teens are looking to make a mark. Daniel and Rebeka seek revenge against the Nazis who slaughtered their family; Simone is determined to fight back against the oppressors who ruined her life and corrupted her girlfriend; Phillip aims to prove that he’s better than his worst mistakes; and Liam is searching for a way to control the portal to the shadow world he’s uncovered, and the monsters that live within it–before the Nazi regime can do the same. When the five meet, and begrudgingly team up, in the forests of Germany, none of them knows what their future might hold.
As they race against time, war, and enemies from both this world and another, Liam, Daniel, Rebeka, Phillip, and Simone know that all they can count on is their own determination and will to survive. With their world turned upside down, and the shadow realm looming ominously large–and threateningly close–the course of history and the very fate of humanity rest in their hands. Still, the most important question remains: Will they be able to save it?
Expected publication: February 23rd 2021 by Philomel Books | Amazon | Goodreads
The Upstairs House by Julia Fine
A provocative meditation on new motherhood—Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening—in which a postpartum woman’s psychological unraveling becomes intertwined with the ghostly appearance of children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown.
There’s a madwoman upstairs, and only Megan Weiler can see her.
Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.
Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.
Expected publication: February 23rd 2021 by Harper | Amazon | Goodreads
She Ain’t Pretty by Renee Miller
Blake Swanson answered an ad for a job as a farmhand, but when he arrives for his interview, Lily, the widow who placed the ad, seduces him. He forgets everything but Lily as he falls down a rabbit hole of sex and terror.
Eva Bright is following a true crime scoop for a book, and infiltrates a cult run by a woman named Lily Maenad via a job posting. Working as Lily’s assistant, Eva knows she’s stumbled into something bigger than a doomsday cult. Lily isn’t just some nut in the woods trying to convince people she’s the next Messiah.
Eva teams up with a hopeless young man who has been drained by Lily, but are they enough to stop the terrors going on?
Swarms of powerful mosquitoes sucking victims dry. Insatiable horseflies feasting on living flesh. Huge roaches with a ferocious bite. No tent is safe at the Green Swamp Zip-Line Adventure and Campground.
Camp manager, Casey Lovitt, and entomologist, Dr. Phillip Edwards, must go up against powerful business interests and cover-ups from the local sheriff’s department to stop the deadly infestation. And with the busy tourist season fast approaching, time is running out. Will Casey and Phillip stop the onslaught of hungry bugs, or will the bodies continue to pile up among the long-buried secrets of the Green Swamp?
Book 25 in the Rewind-or-Die series: imagine your local movie rental store back in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, remember all those fantastic covers. Remember taking those movies home and watching in awe as the stories unfolded in nasty rainbows of gore, remember the atmosphere and textures. Remember the blood.
Expected publication: February 25th 2021 by Unnerving | Amazon | Goodreads
Jen is one of our LOHF admins. Jen manages the technical side of the Ladies of Horror Fiction website. She also keeps a spotlight on middle grade and young adult horror each month.
You can also find Jen on her blog Book Den, Twitter as @bookden, Instagram as @bookdenjen, on Goodreads, and Letterboxd.
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