horror round-up - Maiseh Review

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horror round-up

A collection of 16 posts

2025's Summer of Horror

2025's Summer of Horror

As we near the halfway reading point for 2025, this year’s horror fare has already started to eclipse 2024. As a reader and reviewer, I had focused on recently published books last year in an effort to pick up on trends. This isn’t always recommended, since you often

November and December Horror Round-Up

horror round-up

November and December Horror Round-Up

I decided to just combine these two months into one given how dense the end of the year has become, and because I'll shortly put out a number of "best of" lists to cover some great work from 2024. This was amongst the best couple months

October Horror Round-Up

October Horror Round-Up

We Used to Live Here - Marcus Kliewer (Atria) Pick of the Month The best horror begins with the same premise: something feels a little off, and it’s about to get weirder. A young couple is flipping a rural home when a family stops by. The father claims to

September Horror Round-up

September Horror Round-up

The Night Guest - Hildur Knútsdóttir, Translated by Mary Robinette Kowel (Tor Nightfire) * Pick of the Month* The story of the Night Guest caught my eye as the perfect narrative allegory for the kind of exhausting chronic illnesses we are talking about more and more in the era of long

August Horror Round-up

horror round-up

August Horror Round-up

Knock, Knock, Open Wide - Neil Sharpson (Tor) *Pick of the Month* While Neil Sharpson’s new novel (the first since he shifted to writing full time) seems to have arrived late last year with little fanfare, the recent release of the paperback edition will hopefully receive the commendations it

July Horror Round-Up

horror round-up

July Horror Round-Up

No One is Safe! - Philip Fracassi (Lethe Press) *Pick of the Month* With all honesty, few books have been as engaging, frightening, or delightful as Philip Fracassi’s recent collection, No One is Safe. While the book is branded around a “pulp horror” aesthetic, it really follows a similar

June Horror Round-Up

June Horror Round-Up

Cuckoo - Gretchen Felker-Martin (Tor) *Pick of the Month* Gretchen Felker-Martin’s follow-up to her celebrated provocation, Man-Hunt, is a visceral, violent, and often upsetting title about queer kids dropped into the desert for a type of torturous conversion therapy. The book picks up on the 1990s-2000s phenomenon of prison

May Horror Round-Up

horror round-up

May Horror Round-Up

Myrrh - Polly Hall (Titan Books) Pick of the Month Polly Hall’s new book Myrrh took a little while to launch for me, partially because of the incredibly fragmented prose that alternates between narrators every page or two. We meet Myrrh, a young biracial woman who wants to seek

April Horror Round-Up

horror round-up

April Horror Round-Up

Take a look at some of the best new horror books of 2024.

March Horror Round-Up

March Horror Round-Up

Fervour - Toby Lloyd (Hodder & Stoughton) - Pick of the Month Fervour is, like all the books on the list, only coded into horror by the accident of categories. This is how it ultimately made its way to me, one of the few “Jewish horror novels” for contemporary readers.

February Horror Round-Up

February Horror Round-Up

Horror Movie - Paul Tremblay (William Morrow) Tremblay has been on a roll the past couple of years, and yet this may be his high water mark for the decade. While I think Tremblay is best as a short story writer and his recent collection The Beast You Are contains

January Horror Round-Up

horror round-up

January Horror Round-Up

As we head into 2024, we actually are continuing to pile through the best horror from 2023. Books are not the same as movies or music, it takes time to find, read, and consider a book, which means that you really can’t give a perfect “best of” list until

December Horror Round-Up

horror anthology

December Horror Round-Up

They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces - Eric LaRocca (Bad Hand Books) *Pick of the Month* Not only has Eric LaRocca been the “pick of the month” before, he has been this year already. In what has been a stellar few years for LaRocca, his groundbreaking cosmic

November Horror Round-Up

horror anthology

November Horror Round-Up

A look at the best horror books of November 2023.

September Horror Round-Up

The Black Lord - Colin Hinckley (Tenebrous Press) *Pick of the Month* This is exactly the kind of book that small, “weird fiction” press like Tenebrous do so incredibly well. This debut novella by Colin Kinckley is a challengingly fast paced bit of cosmic horror that plays with a variety

August Horror Round-Up

August Horror Round-Up

Some of the best horror books from this summer, and of 2023 so far.