October is for Horror Fans! Here are 8 Scarily Good New Releases

You know when Jordan Peele has a new horror movie hitting theaters, we’re all going to be first in line to go see it. Now, the acclaimed director of Get Out and Nope is bringing his horror sensibilities to a super spooky new anthology. Out There Screaming features a collection of brand new horror stories from Black voices: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Does the name sort of sound familiar? It’s because A Haunting on the Hill is a return to the world of the Shirley Jackson classic The Haunting of Hill House. Holly Sherwin is a struggling playwriting looking for a way to get away from the outside world and focus on her work. So when she discovers Hill House, a mansion hidden away outside of a remote village, Holly packs everything up to retreat to the house and focus on her work. Joining her is her girlfriend Nisa and a troupe of actors. The plan is to spend a month in the mansion working on a play. But the house has other ideas.

Cosmic horror and dark fantasy meet in this first book in a new duology from bestselling authors Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey. In an effort to make a name for herself in the world of magic, Julie spends all of her time going from gig to gig in New York City. From exorcizing demons to making deals with dastardly gods, no job is too horrifying for Julie. But the grind is getting to her. Then her best friend Sarah shows up at her door asking for help, and everything else goes to the wayside. Now Julie’s priority is saving her friend, even if it means journeying into the darkest corners of magical NYC.

If you dig horror with a dash of nostalgia, pick up Frost Bite this October. Demise, North Dakota, is a town trapped in 1997. You see, when an alien worm crash-landed in a trailer park in Demise, it started infecting animals with a memory loss-inducing illness. Now it’s up to Realene and her friend Nate to stop the alien before it infects everyone and leaves the town in shambles.

Here’s an unmissable queer body horror book you’ve got to read this October. Frankie’s world is falling apart after her workplace was bombed by a transphobe. Now, Frankie deals with the trauma by partying, sleeping around, and hanging out with her new friend, Vanya. The two quickly fall into an intense friendship with one another, but the closer Vanya and Frankie get, the more Frankie grows suspicious that Vanya is hiding something from her. Something dark and impossibly evil.

If you love Halloween, you probably don’t love how many stores start playing Christmas music as soon as the leaves turn. We know Halloween deserves its time to shine, but why fight it? The Nightmare Before Christmas proves there’s room for both horror and winter holidays in our hearts. This anthology is a collection of horror set during the winter solstice. It includes new works from some of the horror greats, including Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and Josh Malerman.

The horror of being a new parent is an often-revisited subject in horror fiction, but Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings explores domestic horror in a whole new way. After a horrifically difficult birth, Ana is scarred in more ways than one. Now she and her husband Reid are desperate for some good news. When they win an affordable apartment in one of New York’s most preeminent apartment buildings, they think this is it. But if something seems too good to be true (especially in a horror novel), then you know it probably is.

When Tananarive Due announced she had a new novel coming out, it quickly became one of the most anticipated new horror books of 2023. And it’s finally hitting shelves this Halloween! After kicking a white boy’s leg, Robert Stephen Jones Jr. is sent to Gracetown School for Boys in Gracetown, Florida. The reform school is a house of horrors full of racism, injustice, and the ghosts of the boys who died there.