Welcome to spooky season, one and all! This whole year has been a fright, of course, but as the days grow shorter and cooler, now is the time to curl up with any of this season’s new horror novel releases.
Sure, you could curl up with some Stephen King or other classics, but then you’d be missing out on fresh releases. Do you want to miss out on The Hollow Places, the follow-up to T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones? Are you willing to live without that and myriad other new horror books in your grabby hands?
Good news: You don’t have to. Even in this year of constantly shifting publication dates, there are tried-and-true ways to keep up with new horror novel releases. Here’s our quick guide so you can get your library holds and bookstore preorders ready.
Where to Find New Horror Novel Releases
Book Riot Insiders
For book nerds who mean business, check out Book Riot Insiders, a real-time, curated database of new and upcoming releases in all genres. You can use genre filters to drill down to new horror novel releases. As horror fans know, any number of books slip past our notice with a “thriller” genre tag. To make sure you don’t miss psychological, suspenseful, and downright scary new reads like Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind, you should leave that mystery/thriller filter on too.
Book Riot has two subscription options for this treasure trove of new horror novel releases, and both have a two-week free trial. So there’s really no excuse for letting the publication date of C.J. Cooke’s Gothic thriller The Nesting (September 29) fly right by you.
“The Fright Stuff” Newsletter
Maybe you’d like horror news delivered straight to your inbox. Book Riot’s The Fright Stuff newsletter gathers up all the ghoulish updates from the world of horror—including new horror novel releases—and sends them to you each week.
Email sucks, but this one doesn’t. No other message in your inbox is as likely to shout at you to read Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark immediately when it’s published October 13. That means every other email is a failure because my god, you need to read Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark.
Horror Publishers
Another good way to stay up-to-date on new horror novel releases is to get the news straight from the horse’s (horror-se’s?) mouth. Follow horror publishers like Off Limits Press on social media for updates on new releases and newly announced books.
You can also follow publishing blogs like Tor Nightfire. Much like the main Tor.com blog is a compendium of sci-fi and fantasy goodness, Nightfire, Tor’s new horror imprint, gathers all sorts of news about horror—including new horror novel releases. Their beautiful lists of upcoming releases are the reason I know about On Sundays, She Picked Flowers, Yah Yah Scholfield’s upcoming southern gothic yarn.
(Disclaimer: I also contribute to the Nightfire blog.)
Online Retailers
As you’re shopping, you can also keep an eye on the horizon. On Barnes & Noble’s website, you can search new horror novel releases and upcoming releases. You even have the option to filter by horror subjects: ghost stories, psychological horror, vampires, etc. These filtered, customizable views offer the perfect reminder to preorder upcoming reads like Emily M. Danforth’s adult debut, the comic horror Plain Bad Heroines.
If you use Amazon, you can filter and find new releases, too—though Amazon makes horror fans work for it. The best way to get ahead of new horror novel releases is to use the Coming Soon list in Amazon’s Books section and filter down through Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, and finally Horror. Though a note from experience: You’ll find great new horror books like next month’s horror collection Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror, edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto; you’ll also see a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and other “genre” fiction in the results too.
If all of those methods seem like too much work, you can outsource the vigilance and sign up for TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations, Book Riot’s book subscription service. Our trained team of Bibliologists can pick out the perfect horror reads for you.
