Spring is coming, my creepy friends! And with it, a bounty of new horror fiction. This month, we’ve got new books from Catriona Ward, Max Gladstone, Matthew Lyons, Ramsey Campbell, Camilla Sten, John Langan, Laurel Hightower, Ally Wilkes, and many more.
On the Nightfire front, say hello to Sundial, Catriona Ward’s twisty new psychological horror novel (Stephen King himself says “DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK. Authentically terrifying.”)!
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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March’s new horror titles:
- The Doloriad, Missouri Williams (Mar 1): Macabre, provocative, depraved, and unforgettable, The Doloriad marks the debut of Missouri Williams, a terrifyingly original new voice. Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, and at times striking with the power of physical force, this novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.
- Escape from Yokai Land, Charles Stross (Mar 1): Regular readers of Charles Stross’s Laundry Files might have noticed Bob Howard’s absence from the events of The Nightmare Stacks, and his subsequent return from Tokyo at the start of The Delirium Brief. Escape from Yokai Land explains what he was doing there.
- Gallant, V. E. Schwab (Mar 1): Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source. #1 New York Times–bestselling author V. E. Schwab weaves a dark and original tale about the place where the world meets its shadow, and the young woman beckoned by both sides. The Secret Garden meets Crimson Peak in this stand-alone YA novel perfect for readers of Holly Black and Neil Gaiman.
- The Night, Rodrigo Blanco Calderon, trans. Daniel Hahn & Noel Hernández (Mar 1): Recurring blackouts envelop Caracas in an inescapable darkness that makes nightmares come true. Real and fictional characters, most of them are writers, exchange the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began with the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles.
- Sundial, Catriona Ward (Mar 1): Sundial is a new, twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street. You can’t escape what’s in your blood… All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. Far from her childhood home, Sundial, hidden deep in the wild Mojave Desert. But beneath the veneer, Rob is terrified for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. Running from her past has led her directly back to it — what’s buried at Sundial could never stay a secret forever, and Rob must risk one last trip out there to protect her family, and her future. (A Nightfire title)
- Freaks, Brett Riley (Mar 3): Four high-school friends suffer daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies. When the friends accidentally open a portal to another dimension, they unintentionally allow terrifying, other-worldly creatures to invade their small Arkansas town. Discovering that they are now endowed with strange superpowers, the four teens must fight to save the lives of family and friends now in mortal peril and thwart a secret government task force that appears to be hunting them.
- Escaping the Body: Poems, Chloe N. Clark (Mar 7): Chloe N. Clark’s poetry collection is a surreal and profound journey through space, forests, monsters, myths, spells, magic tricks, forests, and the body. Escaping the Body is a collection of dreams of the flesh, exploring the cosmic rifts between the soul and the body, encouraging readers to escape their body in search of the liminal space beyond skin and bones.
- The Book of Living Secrets, Madeleine Roux (Mar 8): Perfect for fans of The Hazel Wood, this genre-bending page-turner from New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Roux follows two girls who transport themselves into the world of their favorite book only to encounter the sinister alternate reality that awaits them.
- Face The Night, Alan Lastufka (Mar 8): Cellar, Ohio’s first police sketch artist just drew the wrong face. A face with no name, with no voice, but with one hell of a secret…
- Last Exit, Max Gladstone (Mar 8): American Gods meets The Dark Tower in Last Exit, a dark, contemporary fantasy of the open road, alternate realities, and self-discovery, from a Locus Award-nominated and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Max Gladstone.
- A Black and Endless Sky, Matthew Lyons (Mar 15): From the author of The Night Will Find Us comes a white-knuckled horror-thriller set across the American Southwest. Road trips can be hell. Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town twelve years ago, they couldn’t be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque, hoping to mend their broken relationship along the way. But when a strange accident befalls Nell at an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert, she begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. As their journey through the desolate American Southwest reveals the grotesque change happening within his sister, one thing becomes clear to Jonah: It’s not only Nell in there anymore.
- The Book of Cold Cases, Simone St. James (Mar 15): A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel.
- Roost, Hope Madden (Mar 15): Every spring in small town Ohio, kids get a touch more daylight, wander a little farther from the front porch, and spend a bit more time off on their own, exploring. One such spring, the Murphy twins were considered an Easter miracle. And now, almost 18 years later — Easter week, 1988 — the girls approach their birthday, and busybodies around town get a little anxious. Every time their birthday falls on Easter Sunday, bad things seem to happen, and the neighbors have noticed. A babysitter goes missing. The little girl up the road meets a bad end. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe living in a town dropped smack in the middle of farmland — with miles of corn in every direction — makes people feel isolated from the outside. Folks start to see evil where it isn’t. Or maybe this year, the devil’s come home to roost.
- What We Harvest, Ann Fraistat (Mar 15): For fans of Wilder Girls comes a nightmarish debut guaranteed to keep you up through the night, about an idyllic small town poisoned by its past, and one girl who must fight the strange disease that’s slowly claiming everyone she loves.
- The World Below, David Peak (Mar 15): Witches, LSD psychosis, and the slippery nature of truth: The World Below is about the limitless horror of grief and the unbreakable bonds of blood. Be prepared!
- Palimpsest: A Collection of Contemporary Horror, Caitlin Marceau (Mar 16): From one of Canada’s hottest young talents comes this stellar collection of contemporary horror stories and poetry. Caitlin Marceau’s work ranges from the quietly unnerving to the deeply disturbing, taking in post-apocalyptic futures, supernatural forces, psychological terrors and deals with the devil. One thing’s for certain: these stories will linger in your mind for long after you’ve read them.
- The Bone Orchard, Sara A. Mueller (Mar 22): Sara A. Mueller’s The Bone Orchard is a fascinating whodunit set in a lush, gothic world of secrets and magic–where a dying emperor charges his favorite concubine with solving his own murder, and preventing the culprit, which undoubtedly is one of his three terrible sons, from taking control of an empire.
- The Shadow Glass, Josh Winning (Mar 22): Dark Crystal meets About a Boy in a thrilling race against the clock to save the world in this nostalgia-infused adventure.
- We Are the Ones Possessed, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda (Mar 22): Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, author of La Belle Ajar, brings you a death-themed horror poetry collection with mortality, murder, and muerte oozing from every one of these terrifying verses.
- When It Rains, Mark Allan Gunnells (Mar 25): The rain keeps falling, and at Friedkin University, the sanctuary of the campus bookstore swiftly becomes a dangerous battlefield. Is it man versus nature? Or man versus man?
- Wicked Blood, E.C. Hanson (Mar 25): After the unexpected death of their parents, three teenagers must fend for themselves in a farmhouse. Marina, the lone daughter of the Florin family, assumes the reins of the family. But her brothers start to display weird habits and their penchant for violence gets out of control. Will Marina be able to contain them or will she submit to their power in an attempt to prolong her young life?
- All the White Spaces, Ally Wilkes (Mar 29): Something deadly and mysterious stalks the members of an isolated polar expedition in this haunting and spellbinding historical horror novel, perfect for fans of Dan Simmons’s The Terror and Alma Katsu’s The Hunger.
- Below, Laurel Hightower (Mar 29): While driving through the mountains of West Virginia during a late-night snowstorm, a recently divorced woman experiences bizarre electrical problems, leaving her with little choice but to place her trust with a charismatic truck driver. But when an unexplainable creature with haunting red eyes gets between them, she is forced to make one of the toughest decisions of her life. Will she abandon the stranger who kept her safe—or will she climb down below, where reality has shapeshifted into a living nightmare?
- Monarch, Candice Wuehle (Mar 29): The cryptic worlds of Hanna and Stranger Things mingle with the dark humor of Dare Me in this debut novel about a teen beauty queen who discovers she’s been a sleeper agent in a deep state government program
- My Dearest Darkest, Kayla Cottingham (Mar 29): Wilder Girls meets The Craft in this sapphic horror debut that asks: what price would you be willing to pay to achieve your deepest desires?
- The Resting Place, Camilla Sten (Mar 29): The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face. When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her grandmother’s murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.
- Shadow Flicker, Gregory Bastianelli (Mar 29): What is the secret behind the hallucinations on Kidney Island, just off the coast of Maine? Are the shadow flickers of the wind turbines causing the lack of sleep, or is there a far darker power at work?
- The Temps, Andrew DeYoung (Mar 29): Wryly funny and briskly plotted, The Temps is a surprising literary take on the experience of being young and underemployed in a world plagued by apocalyptic fears.
- The Way of the Worm, Ramsey Campbell (Mar 29): The third and final novel in Ramsey Campbell’s triumphant Lovecraftian trilogy, The Three Births of Daoloth, where time travel, monstrous evil and the alien apocalypse combine to create a stunning conclusion for streaming TV lovers and suspense readers alike.
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.
