Horror is Heating Up: 10 New Horror Books Out August 2024

House of Bone and Rain is a stunning mix of supernatural horror and revenge thriller from Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home. Set in Puerto Rico, this novel is about teenage friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul, and Bimbo who seek vengeance after Bimbo’s mother is shot and killed. On their mission for revenge, the boys encounter gang violence and supernatural forces.

Hum is a sci-fi/dystopian horror novel set in a city completely transformed by AI, climate change, and intelligent robots called “hums.” May has just lost her job to AI. Desperate for money and hoping to help resolve her family’s debt, she agrees to undergo an experiment that would change her appearance, making her unrecognizable to surveillance. May then decides to take her family on what should be a relaxing trip to a beautiful Botanical Garden. But her family doesn’t share her desire to unplug from the outside world, and the Botanical Garden doesn’t end up being the calming place May anticipated.

I heard this book is like if It Follows and The Outsider had a baby while also hanging out with The Evil Dead. So you know, I mashed that “Want to Read” button. Hard. This crime horror novel follows career criminal Anne Heller who retreats to her family’s cabin — the site of her mother’s untimely death — after a bank heist goes terribly wrong. In tow are her partner Jessup and a police officer they’ve taken hostage. Stakes are high, but at the cabin, Anne begins to realize that the cops aren’t the only ones who are looking for her. And when someone comes knocking on her cabin door, it’s not at all who she would have expected.

The Unmothers is a new folk horror novel that is atmospheric, chilling, and will live in your brain for the rest of time (probably). After the tragic death of her husband, journalist Marshall is sent to the small town of Raeford to cover what everyone assumes will be a fairly easy assignment: a horse has reportedly given birth to a human baby. Everyone thinks it’s a hoax, but as soon as Marshall arrives in Raeford, she senses something strange is going on.

If the creepy illustrations are what really sticks with you when you read middle grade horror, then you’re going to love Remy Lai’s Read at Your Own Risk. When Hannah and her friends attempted to communicate with the dead, she thought it was just a game. Little did she know whatever entities she summoned would crawl their way into her sketchbook. Hannah soon learns that when you’re messing with spirits, it’s never a game. And now something evil is coming for her.

Gillian Flynn’s imprint has been nothing but winners for me so far, and Wen-Yi Lee’s YA horror novel The Dark We Know can be added to that list of winners. After Isadora Chang’s abusive father dies, Isa returns to the mining town where she grew up, despite how oppressive the place had always felt to her. She tells herself she’ll only stay long enough to collect her father’s inheritance, but then she’s confronted by her former friend Mason. Mason says their friends were killed by a supernatural force, and now he needs her help to destroy it before it comes for them all.

This debut novel from Kailee Pedersen draws heavily from the author’s own experiences of being adopted from Nanning, China, and growing up in Nebraska on a farm. Pederson’s novel also pulls from Chinese mythology. All of this adds up to one chilling tale of supernatural horror mixed with family drama. Nick Morrow left his home in Nebraska in the hopes of putting all of his family trauma in the past. But when his abusive father, Carlyle, asks for Nick and his brother Joshua to return to the farm before he dies, neither son can say no. Nick has certain expectations for what returning to Nebraska will mean. But nothing could prepare him for what actually happens there.