Upcoming Horror From Women Authors, Part III

Women in Horror Month might be over, but we’re never done supporting women writers. After reading through lists one and two, if you’re still working on compiling your summer/fall/winter reading list(s), we’ve got 10 more works slated for your leisure.

Buy these books. Borrow these books. Request these books. Post, share, and review these books. Not only are women under attack in this country, but books are, too—especially those with controversial topics and themes, violence, and queer characters. The horror community is a much richer place with these women in it, so please support them in any way you can!

Anna Meyer: Saint Catherine

I’m a big fan of graphic novels, so this book can’t be released soon enough. Touted as her first graphic piece, author, designer, and comic artist Anna Meyer crafts the tale of twenty-something-year-old Catherine who has never skipped Sunday Mass a day in her life—until now. As a result of her struggle to balance work, life, family, and relationships, Catherine fears her biggest fear has come true: she’s being possessed by a demon.

Saint Catherine shares what it really means to be good, to take responsibility for your hopes, desires, and fears, all while allowing yourself to let go of guilt.

Bonnie Quinn: How to Survive Camping: The Man with No Shadow

Bonnie Quinn will release the fourth installment of her How to Survive Camping series this summer, just in time to pack it on your next wilderness trip! The series follows Kate, a multi-generation campground manager whose family property has taken on a folklore of its own: monsters.

“How to Survive Camping is Kate’s attempt to educate people about the dangers of inhuman creatures so that they can stay alive and come back next year to pay more camp fees and keep the place going,” writes Quinn.

In The Man with No Shadow, one of the Goat Valley Campground’s most dangerous inhabitants prepares to take over the campground for himself and establish a full monster-takeover. Pre-order your copy to find out this August if Kate’s bloodline will survive the fight.

Dianna Gunn: Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror

A little over a year after her call for submissions was issued on Renaissance, Dianna Gunn is gearing up to release her anthology, Choices. The collection was curated to cover the horrors of having your reproductive rights stripped away. Could there really be anything more horrifying than having your bodily autonomy stripped away? As women’s right to choose is challenged yet again throughout America, the harsh reality is that these basic human rights have already been stripped away from people of marginalized genders.

Gunn is known as “That Murder Lady” on Bluesky and aside from this anthology and several other works, she is a murder writer for hire. That’s right. Gunn writes custom death scenes for readers who’ve always wanted to see themselves killed in fiction. Her collection is being placed into Killer Debt, another upcoming anthology Gunn is a part of. Be on the look out for both collections this year.

Koji A. Dae: Casual

You don’t have to wait to order this new work of literary horror. In this work of fiction, Koji A. Dae describes Valya’s neural implant, CASUAL. Used to manage her depression and anxiety—and even helped her to get pregnant—Valya is put into a real predicament prior to birthing her baby, as use of the implant while caring for a newborn has been strictly prohibited by law and she requires a full detox. Her options? Deal with her growing panic attacks or install a minimally-tested device in her own child. In a review, author of Glass Stories Ivy Grimes shares that the novel is, “Akin to 1984 and Brave New World.”

Later this year, Dae will release Hold My Heart, a noir cosmic horror about Emma who, in suffering from severe depression, looks to hire a serial killer for her own murder. However, when Emma decides to back out of the agreement, she learns it might not be possible.

Leila Taylor: Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread

Another book out now, Leila Taylor’s anthology is a collection that explores the architecture of haunted houses, creepy domestic spaces, and how the horror genre corrupts the sanctity of home. Everything from gothic mansions to the infamous Amityville House, and even the Unabomber’s cabin, Taylor explains through a variety of examples in television, film, and literature how these varying architectural forms of home and once-sanctuaries have managed to capture the horror that occurred within them.

Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread sounds like a truly fascinating dive into not just why we are drawn to these unsettling places, but how they become vessels for terror in the first place. As someone who loves when a setting or place can serve as important as, or even as the main character of a story, I can’t help but wonder what’s lurking around every corner, under every step, or behind its walls.

Marisca Pichette: Every Dark Cloud

Just two years after being nominated for a Bram Stoker for Superior Achievement in Poetry for Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens In Your Hair, Marisca Pichette’s haunting cli-fi novella Every Dark Cloud is noted to be ideal for fans of Tiffany Morris and Stephanie Feldman, combining a dystopian setting and class-conscious narrative. Shedding just a glimmer of hope for shared humanity, characters Mallory and Rein must fight to survive an imploding world. Protected by a layer of artificial cloud, the duo fights radioactive light that causes their skin to twist and burn.

Jaq Evans, author of What Grows in the Dark, writes: “Marisca Pichette's Every Dark Cloud is a spare, unflinching, yet wonderfully compassionate window into a future that feels all too possible - but even in the darkness of late-stage capitalism taken to its (un)natural extreme, Pichette never loses sight of human connection, both to each other and to the natural world. It's a quick, fully realized read with its fingers planted firmly in the soil, delightfully queer sensibilities, and characters I would gladly follow far beyond these pages.”

Prefer listening to your books? Support What Sleeps Beneath by getting these books and more at Libro.fm!

Lucy Rose: The Lamb

United Kingdom-based author and award-winning writer/director Lucy Rose has blessed fans with yet another work of horror prose: The Lamb. Dubbed a Teatime Book Club Pick by Dakota Johnson, the novel manages to successfully blend folklore with love, enchantment, and well, horror. The story zooms in on a mother-daughter duo living in a secluded cottage by the forest. Things are mostly quiet—except when strays, or “lost souls,” stumble across their property after wandering too far from home. A grave mistake on their part to come knocking, Mama might seem nice, but she’s always craving for something that only fresh bodies can satisfy.

Readers enter the story as Eden, a captivating stranger, makes his way to their cottage in the middle of a snowstorm. Unlike the others, this lost soul offsets the balance between Margot and her mother. As Margot grapples with shifting loyalties, forbidden desires, and the weight of her mother’s insatiable needs, she must decide if she’ll remain in the shadows—or finally break free.

V. Castro: The Pink Agave Motel & Other Stories

V. Castro is a Mexican American writer from San Antonio, Texas, now based in the United Kingdom. A two-time Bram Stoker Award nominee, she crafts chilling tales of horror, erotic horror, and science fiction. Her latest work, The Pink Agave Motel & Other Stories, released at the beginning of the year, covers a collection of stories featuring characters that could become your next lover, or your next meal. At The Pink Agave Motel, brutality and desire intertwine to provide readers with a provocative blend of horror and eroticism.

In the titular tale, Valentina, the leader of a mysterious creature cohort, must conceal a murder on motel grounds—teaming up with the victim’s dangerously attractive friend to unravel the truth. Elsewhere, a woman drinks with sea creatures at a honky tonk, trapped guests find sexual liberation, and aliens slip into seductively deceptive disguises. Noted to be steeping in Mexican folklore and feminine themes, each story explores an unhinged impulse lurking beneath the human longing.

Wendy N. Wagner: Girl in the Creek

This summer, eco-horror lovers will see the release of another masterpiece, this one by Wendy N. Wagner. Girl in the Creek describes how climate change is transforming our world. Perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and T. Kingfisher, readers follow Erin on the search for her brother Bryan who’s been missing for five years after hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

Last seen alive at the foothills of Mt. Hood, Erin begins following in her brother’s footsteps. However, when she comes face-to-face with the corpse of a local woman in a creek, it quickly becomes clear that Erin has put herself in the crosshairs of a powerful force—from this world and beyond.

“Masterful...This is a compulsively readable novel with strong characters that live and breathe on the page and a richly detailed and evocative Pacific Northwest setting,” writes Bram Stoker Award-winning author Tim Waggoner of The Deer Kings.

Amanda Casile: Broken Trail

My love for the outdoors and true crime just couldn’t resist including this final upcoming release. Written by Amanda Casile, Broken Trail is one that will break you. Walking alongside criminal psychologist Clara after a divorce, we witness her do what she knows best: throw herself into her work. That is, until one case in particular consumes her.

A young woman stands accused of murdering her boyfriend on a remote hiking trail, and Clara’s obsession with the truth leads her to a reckless decision as she takes her estranged daughters to hike the same path. Once on the trail, eerie visions haunt her, and a terrifying presence stalks them through the woods. When the family is violently separated, Clara must face both the horrors of the forest and her own demons to reunite them—before the wilderness swallows them whole.

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Article by Destiny King

Destiny writes about true crime and thrillers. She likes movies and stories that make you question the world around you, more so than what makes you jump.

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