2025 BIPOC Horror Novels for the Read Harder Challenge
Horror fans, are you ready to embark on another year of Read Harder Challenges? The 2025 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge features a lot of great prompts to encourage you to read outside of your comfort zone and even explore new favorites. But going outside your comfort zone doesn’t mean you can’t also read the genre you love most. These upcoming 2025 horror books by BIPOC authors would be a great way to fulfill the first prompt of the Read Harder Challenge, potentially discover a new-to-you author, and definitely uncover a new favorite horror novel this year.
They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran (Bloomsbury, March 4)
2025 brings us a new young adult horror novel from Trang Thanh, the author of She is a Haunting. Ever since Mercy, Louisiana, was hit by a catastrophic hurricane, red algae covers everything and strange mutations are everywhere. Noon’s mother is convinced their deceased family members have been reincarnated as sea creatures. Now Noon and her mother scour the submerged town, searching for anything that could lead them back to their loved ones. Meanwhile, Noon is hiding a secret of her own, and soon she will be forced to confront the past and uncover the truth of what she really is.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga, March 18)
If you haven’t picked up a Stephen Graham Jones book yet, this Read Harder Challenge is the perfect opportunity for you to get with the program. This historical horror novel is set in the American West in 1912. When the diary of a Lutheran pastor is discovered hidden within a wall, details of the deaths of 217 Blackfeet Indians are uncovered. The story is told through interviews with a strange character: Goodstab, a Blackfeet vampire who haunts the reservation looking for revenge.
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang (Dutton, May 13)
In 2023, Ling Ling Huang’s reeled readers in with her literary horror takedown of the beauty industry in Natural Beauty. Now in 2025, we’re getting the sci-fi/horror novel Immaculate Conception, a story about an obsessive friendship between two women—Enka and Mathilde—who meet in art school and a new, innovative technology that is supposed to heighten empathy. But with something that will allow Enka to enter Mathilde’s mind, how far will she go in pursuit of a strong friendship?
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