This Month in New Horror Books: March 2021

As the saying goes, March comes in like a lion – if that’s true, then it’s a particularly literate feline. Read on for March’s new horror books on sale this month, including new work from V. Castro, Stephen King, Premee Mohamed, Kevin Brockmeier, Jeffrey Ford, 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.

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March’s new horror titles:

• The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, ​Marjorie Bowen (Mar 2): Marjorie Bowen was a prolific author of some 150 books and counted Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, and Graham Greene among her many admirers. Her most enduring work is her tales of the ghostly and supernatural, her favorites of which she collected in 1949 under the title The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories. This collection of twelve stories, newly reissued as part of Valancourt’s Monster, She Wrote series, ranks among the finest volumes of British ghost stories of all time.
• Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes (Mar 2): Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a dark fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.
• Dead Space, Kali Wallace (Mar 2): An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.
• Down Comes The Night, Allison Saft (Mar 2): A snow-drenched romantic gothic fantasy full of magic and disease in a crumbling mansion that’ll keep you racing through the pages long into the night.
• Later, Stephen King (Mar 2): The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine—as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.
• Machinehood, S.B. Divya (Mar 2): From the Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya, Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy.
• The Headless Boy, Kelli Owens (Mar 8): Reeling from the loss of a child, Maggie finds her job at the local daycare unbearable and errands around town impossible. Unable to heal, she sinks further into the grip of grief and depression. Jake is a good guy, a great husband, and wants only the best for his broken wife. Therapy and medications aren’t helping, and a change of scenery makes perfect sense. A new home. A fresh start. But once they’ve settled in, Maggie offers him an alternative. And though Jake doesn’t believe in ghosts, he plays along with the charade in the name of helping his wife. Until he discovers it’s not a game. They are not alone. As the subtle activity grows violent, Jakes realizes the thing in their house has chosen Maggie as a surrogate mother, and it does not want a father figure. Jake and Maggie’s fresh start has become a battlefield, and he’s no longer sure which side his wife is on. Does Jake have the strength to save them both?
• All the Murmuring Bones, A.G. Slatter (Mar 9): A harrowing and spellbinding tale of dark family secrets, grim magic, witches, and creatures of myth and the sea; of strong women and the men who seek to control them.
• The Ghost Variations, Kevin Brockmeier (Mar 9): From the author of The Brief History of the Dead comes a collection of one hundred (!) short ghost stories, some funny, some poignant, and some terrifying.
• The Girls Are All So Nice Here, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn (Mar 9): Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.
• Reality and Other Stories, John Lanchester (Mar 9): Ghost stories for the digital age by the Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Wall. Reality and Other Stories takes readers to a disquieting, uncanny world familiar to fans of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell-phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real…
• The Second Bell, Gabriela Houston (Mar 9): In this Slavic-inspired dark fantasy, a young striga ostracized as a monster by her community fights to harness the power of her second heart, while her mother sacrifices everything to stop her…
• Creatures of Passage, Morowa Yejidé (Mar 16): With echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Yejidé’s novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it.
• Our Last Echoes, Kate Alice Marshall (Mar 16): Kara Thomas meets Twin Peaks in this supernatural thriller about one girl’s hunt for the truth about her mother’s disappearance. People have been vanishing from Bitter Rock for decades, leaving only their ghostly echoes behind. Sophia is the only one who can break the cycle–or risk becoming nothing more than another echo haunting the island.
• The Whispering House, Elizabeth Brooks (Mar 16): The Whispering House trades in secrets: of a son haunted by his family’s unsettling past, and a young woman uncovering the startling truth about her sister’s last days.
• Dark Lullaby, Polly Ho-Yen (Mar 23): The world is suffering an infertility crisis. The last natural birth was over twenty years ago and now the only way to conceive is through a painful fertility treatment. Any children born are strictly monitored, and if you are deemed an unfit parent then your child is extracted. After witnessing so many struggling to conceive – and then keep – their babies, Kit thought she didn’t want children. But then she meets Thomas and they have a baby girl, Mimi. Soon the small mistakes build up and suddenly Kit is faced with the possibility of losing her daughter, and she is forced to ask herself how far she will go to keep her family together.
• I Would Haunt You If I Could, Sean Padraic Birnie (Mar 23): The debut short story collection from Sean Padraic Birnie is sown with seeds of sorrow and grief, and imbued with disquieting bodily horrors. These tales are the product of an uncanny and febrile imagination. Birnie’s writing balances on the knife’s edge of the horror and literary divide. Stories that cut and bleed. Stories that linger and haunt.
• The Lost Village, Camilla Sten (Mar 23): The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.
• Your Turn to Suffer, Tim Waggoner (Mar 23): Lorelei Palumbo is harassed by a sinister group calling themselves The Cabal. They accuse her of having committed unspeakable crimes in the past, and now she must pay. The Cabal begins taking her life apart one piece at a time – her job, her health, the people she loves – and she must try to figure out what The Cabal thinks she’s done if she’s to have any hope of answering their charges and salvaging her life.
• A Broken Darkness, Premee Mohamed (Mar 30): The highly anticipated sequel to Beneath the Rising. It’s been a year and a half since the Anomaly, when They tried to force their way into the world from the shapeless void. Nick and Johnny are piecing their lives back together, but when more portals open to Them, they must risk everything to fight the darkness once more.
• Goddess of Filth, V. Castro (Mar 30): One hot summer night, five best friends hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely. The local priest is convinced it’s a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

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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.

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