This Month in New Horror Books: July 2022

Happy July! We’re back, following some technical difficulties. This month, look out for new books from titans of terror like Paul Tremblay, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, T. Kingfisher, Sarah Gailey, Nat Cassidy, Ronald Malfi, Nina Nesseth, and many more.

From Nightfire this month, don’t miss What Moves the Dead, a new novella from T. Kingfisher that reimagines Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” now with 100% more mushrooms. Next up, it’s Mary: An Awakening of Terror, Nat Cassidy’s chilling tale of a woman whose menopause has a body count (or does it?). And finally, it’s Nightfire’s first nonfiction release: Nina Nesseth’s Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films takes a deep dive into our love of scary movies, and why we keep coming back for more.

Also, a note: we’re regularly updating release dates and newly announced books both here and on our 2022 horror releases master post. (Missed last year’s list? Right this way!)

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July’s new horror titles:

• Lure, Tim McGregor (July 1): In the chapel of a forsaken fishing village on another world’s shore, the seawashed bones of old gods hang from the rafters. When a new god drifts into the bay, the menfolk fear nothing as they reach for their spears, but capturing Her may be their last act of reckless bravado. Her very presence brings dissent and madness. Her voice threatens to tear the starving, angry community apart. Setting a siege of relentless horror against the backdrop of brine and blood, Lure blurs the line between natural disaster and self-destruction.
• Florida Woman, Deb Rogers (Jul 5): A gleefully dark and entertaining debut for fans of Kevin Wilson and Karen Russell, about one young woman’s sensational, sinister summer at a Floridian wildlife center for exotic monkeys, where all is not what it seems.
• Frightmares, Eva V. Gibson (Jul 5): In a Florida tourist trap, a summer acting job turns into a real-life horror show when a cast member turns up dead—then disappears. This nail-biting story is perfect for fans of Fear Street!
• The Pain Eater, Kyle Muntz (Jul 5): Two brothers from Michigan are reunited after the death of their father. They’ve never been close, but now they have to live together—and it gets more difficult when one discovers a strange creature, vomited from the body of a dead cat. A creature that eats human pain. It feels good: too good. Soon he wants to hurt himself more, just so the pain can be taken away. But the more the creature becomes a part of his life, the more he damages everything around him.
• The Pallbearers’ Club, Paul Tremblay (Jul 5): A cleverly voiced psychological thriller about an unforgettable—and unsettling—friendship, with blood-chilling twists, crackling wit, and a thrumming pulse in its veins—from the nationally bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song.
• The Ruins, Phoebe Wynne (Jul 5): A suspenseful, feminist Gothic coming-of-age tale with shades of Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca, and Atonement, pitched against the sun-soaked backdrop of a summer holiday on the French Riviera.
• Ghostflowers, Rus Wornom (Jul 8): A Southern Gothic about a young waitress in 1970s Virginia who meets her immortal true love, a vampire.
• The Ghost That Ate Us: The Tragic True Story of the Burger City Poltergeist, Daniel Kraus (July 12): A fictionalized true crime novel that follows the author as he unravels the hauntings and murders at a Burger City franchise off I-80 in Iowa, using footnotes, news quotes, crime-scene photos, and survivor interviews.
• Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield (Jul 12): By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea is a genre-bending exploration of the depths of love and grief at the heart of a marriage.
• They Drown Our Daughters, Katrina Monroe (Jul 12): For fans of Jennifer McMahon and Silvia Moreno-Garcia comes a haunting and atmospheric new novel from debut author Katrina Monroe. They say Cape Disappointment is haunted. That if you can hear the call of the water, it’s already too late…
• Three Days in the Pink Tower, EV Knight (Jul 12): Josey Claypool begins the summer before her senior year at a carnival, where a fortune teller with milky-white eyes gives her a foreboding tarot reading. She’s spooked, but nothing could prepare her for the following day when two strange men show up at her front door. Josey is kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a pink cabin in the woods where she is held prisoner. In her darkest moment, the fortune teller appears and gives her a deck of tarot cards, which she must cast and interpret in a fight for her life. In this work of speculative autofiction, award-winning author EV Knight reclaims the narrative of her own past in an exploration of trauma, agency, and survival.
• The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works, Giorgio De Maria (Jul 12): Giorgio De Maria distinguished himself as one of Italy’s most unique and eccentric weird fiction masters. Available in English for the first time, this collection contains two novellas, two short stories, and a dystopian teleplay, “The Appeal,” which the post-cyberpunk novelist Andrea Vaccaro has lauded as “worthy of the best episodes of Black Mirror.”
• Wake the Bones, Elizabeth Kilcoyne (Jul 12): Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile.
• What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher (Jul 12): From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic “The Fall of the House of Usher.” (A Nightfire title)
• Black Mouth, Ronald Malfi (Jul 19): Perfect for fans of Stephen King’s IT, a group of friends return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they first stumbled on as teenagers in this mesmerizing odyssey of terror.
• The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Jul 19): From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.
• Dead Water, C.A. Fletcher (Jul 19): On the edge of the Northern Atlantic lies a remote island. The islanders are an outwardly harmonious community—but all have their own secrets, some much darker than others. And when a strange disorder begins to infect them all, those secrets come to light. Ferry service fails and contact with the mainland is lost. Rumors begin to swirl as a temporary inconvenience grows into nightmarish ordeal. The fabric of the once tight-knit island is unnervingly torn apart—and whatever the cause, the question soon stops being how or why it happened, but who, if anyone, will survive.
• Death by Landscape, Elvia Wilk (Jul 19): What happens when research becomes personal, when the observer breaks through the glass? Through the eye of the fan, this essay collection delves into literal and literary world-building projects–medieval monasteries, solarpunk futures, vampire role plays, environments devoid of humans–bridging the micro and the macro and revealing how our relationship to narrative shapes our relationships to the natural world and to one another.
• Just Like Home, Sarah Gailey (Jul 19): A darkly gothic thriller from nationally bestselling author Sarah Gailey, perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House as well as HBO’s true crime masterpiece I’ll Be Gone in the Dark–with a twist ending that no one can predict.
• Mary: An Awakening of Terror, Nat Cassidy (Jul 19): Nat Cassidy’s debut horror novel Mary blends Midsommar with elements of American Psycho and a pinch of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark as a middle-aged woman explores her connection to an infamous serial killer. (A Nightfire title)
• Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, ed. Vince A. Liaguno & Rena Mason (Jul 19): An anthology of original new horror stories edited by Bram Stoker Award winners Vince Liaguno and Rena Mason that showcases authors from underrepresented backgrounds telling terrifying tales of what it means to be, or merely to seem, “other.”
• Rabbits in the Garden, Jessica McHugh (Jul 19): At twelve years old, Avery Norton had everything: a boyfriend who was also her best friend, the entirety of Martha’s Vineyard as her playground, and her very own garden to tend. By thirteen, it was all over. The discovery of a secret crypt in the basement starts the Norton family down many unexpected avenues, including one that leads to Avery’s arrest for murder and her subsequent imprisonment in Taunton State Lunatic Asylum. Set in 1950s Massachusetts, Rabbits in the Garden follows Avery Norton’s struggle to prove her innocence, exact her revenge, and escape Taunton with her mind intact.
• Skin Grows Over, Lucy Elizabeth Allan (Jul 19): A young woman who has never learned how to grieve begins to come apart following the loss of the one friend who truly understood her. A mysterious and obsessive Humanist celebrant prepares to perform the most important funeral of her life. A world-weary and weather-beaten museum custodian resigns herself to hosting a mysterious ceremony that goes against everything she believes in. Connecting the three of them, a centuries-old bog mummy, hovering around it all, watching, waiting to be put to rest.
• We Will Rise, Tim Waggoner (Jul 19): In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks. A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive?
• Into the Sublime, Kate A. Boorman (Jul 26): A new YA psychological thriller from the author of What We Buried about four teenage girls who descend into a dangerous underground cave system in search of a lake of local legend, said to reveal your deepest fears.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films, Nina Nesseth (Jul 26): In Nightmare Fuel, Nina Nesseth uses her background in biomedical science to explain the mechanics of what makes what we see on the screen so terrifying and what goes on behind the scenes to create the horror in the first place. With spotlight features of some of horror’s most popular films—from classics like The Exorcist to modern hits like A Quiet Place—and interviews with producers, film historians, and creature creators, Nightmare Fuel is both an in-depth dive into the science of fear, and a celebration of the genre. (A Nightfire title)
• Old Country, Matt Query & Harrison Query (Jul 26): Based on the Reddit sensation, a horror thriller about a former Marine and his wife who buy a perfectly secluded ranch, only to discover it’s haunted by a malevolent spirit.
• The Witchery, S. Isabelle (Jul 26): A bewitching YA debut by S. Isabelle, perfect for fans of Maggie Stiefvater, Zoraida Córdova, and Leigh Bardugo!

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As always, if we missed anything, let us know in the comments!

View our 2022 new horror release masterlist here, and view previous monthly new releases posts here.

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