December is usually a lighter month for new books as publishers focus on holiday promotions, but don’t fret – there’s still new horror for you! This month, look for new books from Samantha Kolesnik, Alex White, Victoria Nelson, and more!
Also, a note: we’re continuously updating release dates and newly announced books both here and on our 2021 horror releases master post. Looking for our 2022 preview list? Right this way!
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December’s new horror titles:
- Waif, Samantha Kolesnik (Dec 1): Angela has everything she thought she ever wanted—a successful husband, a lavish house, and a bottomless fortune. But the sight of a strange man in a grocery store one night reawakens her dormant sexuality and soon Angela embarks on a dangerous descent into the world of underground pornography and back-alley plastic surgery. As the stakes get higher, long-buried memories resurface and Angela finds herself enamored with Reena, a fetish film performer. With some help from a queer gang called The Waifs, Angela is forced to make the decision between her unhappy upper-class life and the treacherous world of underground film.
- Notes from the Crawl Room: A Collection of Philosophical Horrors, A.M. Moskovitz (Dec 2): Notes from the Crawl Room employs the lens and methods of horror writing to critique the excesses and absurdities of philosophy. Each story reveals disastrous and dehumanizing effects of philosophies that are separated from real, lived experience (e.g. the absurdity of arguing over a sentence in Kant while the world burns around us). From a Kafkaesque exploration of administrative absurdities to the horrors of discursive violence, white supremacy and the living specters of patriarchy, A.M. Moskovitz doesn’t shy away from addressing the complex aspects of our lives.
- Bedding the Lamia: Tropical Horrors, ed. David Kuraria (Dec 3): In these tales we see a Melanesian farmer seeking land rights from a dominant tribe. Bearing gifts of persuasion, the farmer find that the tribe’s gods might first need appeasing. An artist experimenting with narcotics and obscure occult methods inadvertently solicits an unwelcome muse. A group of holidaymakers travel up a Northern Australian River on a converted war barge. Here brutal colonial past reaches out to ensnare them on a journey into horror. A survivor of the Christchurch earthquakes takes his deceased grandfather’s diaries to recreate the old man’s equatorial travels. On a tiny Micronesian island he steps into an ‘otherworld’, where any action has blackly comical and unpleasant consequences.
- Gwen, in Green, Hugh Zachary (Dec 7): After receiving a large insurance settlement, young couple Gwen and George fulfill a dream by buying their own little island, a secluded, private paradise surrounded by a lush green landscape of plants. What the real estate man didn’t tell them was that years earlier a tragedy took place nearby in the cool, clear pool, whose waters still hold a terrifying, centuries-old secret. This first-ever reissue of Hugh Zachary’s 1974 eco-horror novel features the original cover painting by George Ziel and a new introduction by Will Errickson.
- A History of Wild Places, Shea Ernshaw (Dec 7): The New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep weaves a richly atmospheric adult debut following three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune as they investigate the disappearances of two outsiders.
- The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland, ed. Reggie Chamberlain-King (Dec 8): This anthology of specially commissioned short stories explores the weird, surreal, and dream-like, a world that is off-kilter. Bringing together some of the best of Northern Ireland’s literary talents along with new and exciting voices, this compelling collection is dark, funny, and unsettling.
- Neighbor George, Victoria Nelson (Dec 14): Set in a haunted northern California landscape populated by poets, New Agers, stoners, and burnouts, Neighbor George is a deeply atmospheric story of psychological horror enacted in the liminal space where the natural collides with the supernatural.
- Revenant, Alex White (Dec 21): An all-new novel based on the landmark TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from the acclaimed author of A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe! Jadzia Dax has been a friend to Etom Prit, the Trill Trade Commissioner, over two lifetimes. When Etom visits Deep Space Nine with the request to rein in his wayward granddaughter Nemi, Dax can hardly say no. It seems like an easy assignment: visit a resort casino while on shore leave, and then bring her old friend Nemi home. But upon arrival, Dax finds Nemi has changed over the years in terrifying ways… and the pursuit of the truth will plunge Dax headlong into a century’s worth of secrets and lies.
As always, if we missed anything, let us know in the comments!
View our 2021 new horror release masterlist here, and view previous monthly new releases posts here.
Great list! Would love if you added Sister Funtime by Spencer Hamilton, published December 1. https://books2read.com/b/49kxVd