The Midnight Hour Display
I love reading horror year round, but there's something to be said for picking up a scary book during the month of October. This fall, there are some great new horror releases coming out. I'm going to feature some of the newest titles in our collection, which may or may not be available without placing a hold. BUT never fear--you can choose from an amazing backlist selection. Here are some of the fall horror titles I've got my eye on:
"Play Nice" is bestselling author Rachel Harrison's newest release. "Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so-glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio's parent's messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That's not what Clio's sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house. After Alex's sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house-flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother's claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother's book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio's beautiful life to its very foundation." While you're waiting for your hold on this title, check out "So Thirsty," published in 2024, or her debut "The Return."
Kit Burgoyne is a new voice in the horror genre, and "The Captive" is described as a "satirical 'Rosemary's Baby.'" "For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don't want a ransom--they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline's parents' enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centers, and prisons.
But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She's about to go into labor. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He's capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that's just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline's parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne." Kit Burgoyne is the horror penname for author Ned Beauman, the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of "The Teleportation Accident" and Clarke Award-winning author of "Venomous Lumpsucker."
"Misery meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in "The Graceview Patient," a genre-bending, claustrophobic hospital gothic from the bestselling author Caitlin Starling. "Margaret's rare autoimmune condition has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated and in pain. It has no cure, but she's making do as best she can--until she's offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial. The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital. Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls."
In "Happy People Don't Live Here," a darkly funny gothic tale" by Amber Sparks, a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentrics--and secrets. "Just past the edge of summer, Alice and her daughter, Fern, arrive at the Pine Lake Apartments--a former sanatorium occupied by an ensemble of peculiar neighbors and a smattering of ghosts. Among the living: the Mermaid Lady, who performs in a nightclub fish tank; the building's handyperson, moonlighting as a medium; and an awkwardly charming professor of medieval studies. Fern alone is acquainted with the undead, who pass like troubled clouds through the apartments, humanity mostly lost ages ago. For the determinedly private Alice, Pine Lake seems the perfect place at the edge of the world to hide herself and her daughter--until the day Fern finds a dead body in the dumpster. Intent on solving the mystery of this discarded corpse, Fern eagerly puts her encyclopedic knowledge of detective novels to good use while dodging warnings from her increasingly paranoid mother. She soon comes to realize that within the strange tapestry of Pine Lake residents, nothing is ever quite as it seems. Her investigation digs up long-buried secrets, including her mother's, that implicate each of her neighbors . . . and conjures a new one from beyond the grave." This is a hotly anticipated debut novel!
You'll find these and other haunted reads in our "The Midnight Hour" display. For additional title suggestions, see the lists below:
