101 Dark Fiction Books That Aren’t By Cis White Men

hey everyone,

over the past year or two i’ve really kind of polished my reading tastes and know exactly what i enjoy now and what i won’t and one of my favourite things is dark fiction that isn’t written by cis straight white men. i adore dark fiction but feel like a lot of dark fiction by men relies on degradation, humiliation and violence against women as a shocking factor and….no thankyou. whereas dark fiction by women and non binary authors is often unique, outside the box and turns tropes on their heads. so i thought i’d put together a list of 101 dark fiction books that aren’t written by men so that hopefully you can find some new books to read!

i’m so sorry in advance that there are no trigger warnings included in this post, it just would’ve taken me too long to read reviews of all 101 books and try and find all of the trigger warnings without missing any! so please bare this in mind before picking any of these books up as there will be trigger warnings for each!!

m xx

⭐️1. Exit Management by Naomi Booth: Callum has been given an opportunity: Jozsef’s house is the perfect place to live. All that Jozsef asks in return is for some company while he’s ill and the promise that if it gets too much, someone will be there to help him at the end. When Callum meets Lauren who works in Human Resources and specialises in getting rid of people, Jozsef welcomes them both inside, and so begins a deadly spiral of violence. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53933842

⭐️2. Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica: When a virus makes all animal meat poisonous to humans, human meat becomes legal… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884

⭐️3. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss: Silvie and her parents are living in a hut as an exercise in experimental archaeology. Her father is obsessed with imagining and enacting the harshness of Iron Age life. Haunting Silvie’s narrative is the story of a bog girl, a young woman sacrificed by those closest to her, and the landscape that keeps and reveals the secrets of past violence and ritual as the summer builds to a harrowing climax. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38922230

⭐️4. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark: with a protagonist compared to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, this debut novel follows Irina, a Geordie fetish photographer who becomes obsessed with photographing men she finds on the street. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49083140

⭐️5. Rag by Maryse Meijer: A man, forgotten by the world, takes care of his deaf brother while euthanizing dogs for a living. A stepbrother so desperately wants to become his stepsibling that he rapes his girlfriend. In Meijer’s dark and searingly honest collection, the desperate human desire for connection slips into a realm that approximates horror. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121990

⭐️6. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite: A convicted serial killer fakes his death and leaves his prison cell to build a new life. His journey takes him to New Orleans’ French Quater- to the decadent bars and frivolous boys that haunt the dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim he finds an equal, something he never expected in his wildest dreams… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15320

⭐️7. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison: Near an isolated mansion lies a garden- housing a collection of “butterflies”- young women who have been kidnapped and tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it is a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his specimens. When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning and two FBI agents are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29981261

⭐️8. Savage Island by Bryony Pearce: When reclusive millionaire Marcus Gold announces that he’s going to be staging a competition on his private island, 5 teenagers sign up – the prize is £1M each. But when the competition begins, the group begin to regret their decision. Other teams are hunting their competitors and attacking them for body parts. Can the friends stick together under such extreme pressure to survive? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35432436

⭐️9. Dear Laura by Gemma Amor: Every year on her birthday, Laura gets a letter from a stranger claiming to know the whereabouts of her missing friend, but he’ll only tell her what he knows in exchange for something personal. So begins Laura’s sordid relationship with her new penpal. Her quest for closure will push her to bizarre acts of humiliation and harm, yet no matter how hard she tries, she cannot escape her correspondent’s demands. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52102795

⭐️10. The Price of Meat by KJ Charles: Johanna will do anything to save her beloved Arabella from the cruelty of Mr. Fogg’s madhouse- but ‘anything’ turns out to be more than she bargained for when she finds herself working for a man suspected of worse than murder. As Johanna is plunged from the horror of Reynard’s barber shop into the foul, lawless labyrinth at the heart of London, will she- or anyone- get out alive? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36209332

⭐️11. A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa: In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem that reaches across the centuries to another poet. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with finding out the rest of the story. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51498568

⭐️12. Confessions by Kanae Minato: Her pupils murdered her daughter. Now she will have her revenge. After calling off her engagement Yuko had nothing to live for except her only child. After an accident, Yuko has given up and resigned. But first she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that upends everything her students thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a plot for revenge. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161835

⭐️13. My Heart Hemmed In by Marie Ndiaye: There is something wrong with Nadia and her husband Ange, who slowly realize they are despised by everyone around them. One day a savage wound appears in Ange’s stomach, and as Nadia fights to save her husband’s life their hideous neighbor Noget imposes his care upon them. While Noget fattens them with ever richer foods, Nadia embarks on a nightmarish visit to her ex-husband and estranged son. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32073144

⭐️14. You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce: When an author goes missing, leaving one final manuscript behind, a dark faerie tale unravels involving the “Pepper Man”. But is the Pepper Man real, or a character created as a coping mechanism to deal with childhood abuse? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49188725

⭐️15. Sisters by Daisy Johnson: Desperate for a fresh start, Sheela moves her two daughters across the country to an old family house that has a troubled life of its own. In their new, unsettling surroundings, July finds that the fierce bond she’s always had with September – forged with a blood promise when they were children – is beginning to change in ways she cannot understand. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50788186

⭐️16. We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson: When a struggling actor in 1970s New York gets the call that an enigmatic director wants him for an art film set in the Amazon, he doesn’t hesitate. He quickly realizes he’s made a mistake, replacing an actor who quit after seeing the script- a script the director now claims doesn’t exist. But what the actor doesn’t realize is that the greatest threat might be the town itself, and the mysterious shadow economy that powers this remote jungle outpost. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276249

⭐️17. Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono: In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls, but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. Multiplying perspectives and refracting light from the strangely facing mirrors of fantasy and reality, pain and pleasure, these ten stories present Kono at her very best. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38622807

⭐️18. Cockfight by Maria Fernanda Ampuero: explores the power of the home to both create and destroy those within it. A family’s maids witness a horrible cycle of abuse, a girl is auctioned off by a gang of criminals, and two sisters find themselves at the mercy of their spiteful brother. With violence masquerading as love, characters spend their lives trapped reenacting their past traumas. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52030591

⭐️19. Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes: Detective Versado has hunted down many monsters during her eight years in Homicide. But she’s never seen anything like this. Clayton is a failed artist, a broken man. Life destroyed his plans, so he’s found new dreams – of flesh and bone made disturbingly, beautifully real. Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. And home to a killer who wants to make you whole again… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20706269

⭐️20. Bunny by Mona Awad: Samantha is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’. But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42815544

⭐️21. Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval: Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39216527

⭐️22. Sealed by Naomi Booth: Heavily pregnant Alice is haunted by the rumours of the skin sealing epidemic starting to infect the population. Surely their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger. With her relationship under pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36759987

⭐️23. A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle: the everyday domestic world of Tuttle’s female protagonists is invaded by the bizarre, the uncanny, the horrific. A woman who goes to visit her aunt is shocked to find she is dying – but even more shocking is what is killing her. A divorcing couple arrive at a macabre solution for how to divide ownership of a beloved pet. 13 original and chilling tales. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/753143

⭐️24. The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley: In a post-apocalyptic world where all the women have died a group of men and boys survive. Meet Nate, the storyteller, and the secrets he brings back from the woods. William rules the group with youth and strength, but how long can that last? What about Uncle Ted, who spends so much time out in the woods? And what of mushrooms like heads, on the graves of women? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23250725

⭐️25. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa: A woman goes into a bakery to buy a strawberry cream tart. The place is immaculate but there is no one serving so she waits. Another customer comes in. The woman tells her that she is buying her son a treat for his birthday. Every year she buys him his favourite cake; even though he died in an accident when he was six. From this beginning Ogawa weaves a dark and beautiful narrative that pulls together a seemingly disconnected cast of characters. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17789899

⭐️26. And The Trees Crept In by Dawn Kurtagich: When Silla and Nori arrive at their aunt’s home, it’s immediately clear that the “blood manor” is cursed. But there are secrets too- Who is the beautiful boy that’s appeared from the woods? Who is the man that her little sister sees, but no one else? And why does it seem that, ever since they arrived, the trees have been creeping closer? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28449150

⭐️27. Fortune Box by Madeleine Swann: No one knows where or what Tower Ltd Surprise Packages is or why it’s sending gifts to complete strangers across The City. All they know is that each package is the best thing that’s ever happened to them…or the worst. In one box is a packet of seeds that allows you to grow your perfect date. In another there’s a cupcake that causes anyone who eats it to grow eyeballs all over their skin. There’s also a parcel with a mousetrap that turns all your enemies tiny. Or you could receive your autobiography, which when signed, makes your every thought famous. Or maybe even a key to a secret door that leads to another dimension where all your unfinished and abandoned projects exist. But with each package received comes both fortune and misfortune that will result in unexpected consequences. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38465959

⭐️28. Vile Men by Rebecca Howe Jones: a collection of fourteen short stories that are transgressive, filled with heart and emotion, leaving you sweaty and spent, your heart pounding in your chest. Stolen moments on the subway, fear of intimacy, sexual perversion and dark fears come home to roost all unite in a powerful mixture of literary fiction, contemporary fairy tales, and late night confessions. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23282107

⭐️29. Women’s Weird edited by Melissa Edmundson: Early Weird fiction embraces the supernatural, horror, science fiction, fantasy and the Gothic, and was explored with enthusiasm by many women writers in the UK and USA. Edmundson has brought together a compelling collection of the best Weird short stories by women from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to thrill new readers and delight these authors’ fans. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52779558

⭐️30. The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig: Iseult is a Victorian woman close to spinsterhood whose father is trying to marry her off. She also believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck. When her father finds a suitor to take Iseult off his hands- a comedy of errors ensues. As things progress to talk of marriage, Iseult’s mother becomes increasingly volatile and uncontrollable, and Iseult is forced to resort to extreme, often violent, measures to keep her in check. As the day of the wedding nears, Iseult must decide how to set the course of her life, with increasing interference from both parents, tipping her ever closer to madness, and to an inevitable, devastating final act. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45186551

⭐️31. The Vegetarian by Han Kang: When Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian after grotesque nightmares, her passive rebellion manifests in bizarre and frightening forms, leading her husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister’s husband, a video artist and becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming – impossibly, ecstatically – a tree. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25489025

⭐️32. The Black Country by Kerry Hadley Pryce: Maddie and Harry. They’ll say they live in the Black Country. Say how they met Jonathan, explain how they argued, had a car accident, thought they’d killed someone. And as they search for truth, they’ll tell us their secrets, their mistakes. And we’ll judge them. We’ll judge Harry’s fling with a schoolgirl and Maddie’s previous life. We’ll judge the nature of love and violence, good and evil. The Black Country. For Maddie and Harry, it’s darker than it should be. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26829424

⭐️33. The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns: Growing up in Edwardian south London, Alice longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is restrictive and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and domineering; his new girlfriend brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in memories and fantasies, in her longing for Nicholas, and in the blossoming of what she perceives as her occult powers. A series of strange events unfolds that leads her, dressed in bridal white, to a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster among the crowds on Clapham Common. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1073750

⭐️34. Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford: Ada and her father live tending to their garden. They are not human though. Ada was made by her father from the Ground, a unique patch of earth with birthing and healing properties. They spend their days healing the local human folk – named Cures – who visit them with ailments. When Ada embarks on a relationship with a local Cure, and is forced to choose between her old life and a new one with her human lover, her decision will uproot the town – and the Ground itself – for ever. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52220595

⭐️35. Famished by Anna Vaught: In this toothsome collection, Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets. She explores the perils of selfish sensuality and trifle while child rearing, phantom sweetshop owners, the revolting use of sherbet in occult rituals, homicide by seaside rock, and the perversion of Thai Tapas. Once, that is, you’ve been bled dry from fluted cups by pretty incorporeals and learned about consuming pride in the hungriest of stately homes. Famished: 17 stories to whet your appetite and ruin your dinner. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50752284

⭐️36. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor: The Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of La Matosa is rife with rumours about how and why this murder occurred. As the novel unfolds, Melchor paints a portrait of lives governed by poverty and violence, machismo and misogyny, superstition and prejudice. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46041168

⭐️37. The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue: When Louisa arrives at Temple House, an elite catholic boarding school, she finds herself drawn to fellow pupil Victoria and their bohemian art teacher, Mr Lavelle. The three of them form a bond that seems to offer an escape from the repressive regime of the nuns who run the school. Until Louisa and Mr Lavelle vanish. Years later, a journalist with a childhood connection to Louisa determines to solve the mystery- uncovering a tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50147159

⭐️38. Dead Corpse by Nuzo Onoh: The First time she died, Aku didn’t realise she was dead. But when she died for the second time, she knew that something was sinisterly wrong. It would take Aku’s third death to free her mind from the dark haze that had kept her trapped in a series of harrowing events she’d give ten lifetimes to avoid. Except by then, it would be too late for her to change the chain of tragedy that follows her walking corpse like a swarm of grave-flies. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36351920

⭐️39. The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza: On a dark and stormy night, an unnamed narrator is visited by two women: one a former lover, the other a stranger. They ruthlessly question their host and claim to know his greatest secret: that he is, in fact, a woman. In increasingly desperate attempts to defend his masculinity, he finds himself spiralling deeper into a haunted past that may or may not be his own. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34552743

⭐️40. Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling: Shipping magnate Evelyn controls the dying city of Delphinium with trade deals and secrets. But when mysterious sickness sparks death and obsession, all leading back to her, Evelyn’s brittle existence is strained to breaking. She retreats to her estate, amidst paranoia and poisonous secrets, intent on rooting out this plague before it destroys everything she has built. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50261993

⭐️41. The Cuckoo Girls by Patricia Lillie: Mothers and daughters. Sisters. Legacies and prophecies. The inevitable and the avoidable. The sixteen stories of Weird fiction and horror in Lillie’s debut collection, feature female protagonists of various ages. Young or old, they must deal with the expectations of their twisted worlds. Some can’t escape their fate, some accept it- and some will burn it down. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53264524

⭐️42. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia: When glamorous socialite Noemì receives a frantic letter from her cousin begging to be rescued from a mysterious doom, it’s clear something is desperately amiss and she immediately heads to High Place, a remote mansion in the Mexican countryside. Tough and smart, she is not afraid of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemì; and the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53152636

⭐️43. Things We Say In The Dark by Kirsty Logan: These dark tales explore women’s fears with honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence. From a writer who has been compared to Angela Carter, this is a powerful collection of feminist stories, ranging from vicious fairy tales to disturbing horror and tender ghost stories. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43459812

⭐️44. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan: An inspired re-working of the fairy-tale Snow White and Rose Red. It is the story of two worlds – one real, one magical – and how, despite the safe haven her magical world offers to those who have suffered, her characters can never turn their backs on the real world, with all its beauty and brutality. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13793307

⭐️45. The Dangers Of Smoking In Bed by Mariana Enriquez: A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly. Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, this new collection finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53215250

⭐️46. The Blue Girl by Laurie Foos: In a small lakeside town where summer people flock to vacation, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too- that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23282174

⭐️47. The Doll’s Alphabet by Camilla Grudova: Dolls, sewing machines, tinned foods, mirrors, malfunctioning bodies – many images recur in stories that are in turn child-like and naive, grotesque and very dark. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33807043

⭐️48. The Crows by C M Rosen: Unable to resist the whispering call of Fairwood House, Carrie throws herself into its restoration as a way to escape her own painful past. But when she learns about the bloodless child stuffed up the kitchen chimney in the 1950s, Carrie’s obsession with the unsolved murder leads her deep into danger… and closer to her own death. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48921639

⭐️49. The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal: On a crowded street, dollmaker Iris meets Louis, a painter who yearns to have his work displayed and is desperate for Iris to be his model. Iris agrees, on the condition that he teaches her to paint. Dreaming of freedom, Iris throws herself into a new life of art and love, unaware that she has caught the eye of Silas, a curiosity collector, enchanted by the strange and beautiful. After seeing Iris he finds he cannot forget her. As Iris’s world expands, Silas’s obsession grows. And it is only a matter of time before they meet again . . . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38591165

⭐️50. Liminal by Bee Lewis: Esther, a pregnant amputee, and her husband, are seeking a new life. Spanning the course of a week, Lewis’s gothic fantasia follows Esther as her marriage, life and body begin to dramatically change. By day, she is isolated physically and mentally within her marriage and her new environment. By night, she explores a forbidding forest, pursued by a shadowy figure. Symbolism, dreams and violence abound in this spellbinding unsnaring of a soul. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37810194

⭐️51. Earthlings by Sayaka Murata: a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a young girl who believes she is an alien. Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50269327

⭐️52. Heartbreaker by Maryse Meijer: In her debut collection, Meijer peels back the crust of normalcy and convention, unmasking the fury and violence we are willing to inflict in the name of love and loneliness. Her characters are a strange ensemble- a feral child, a girl raised from the dead, a possible pedophile- who share in vulnerability and heartache, but maintain an unremitting will to survive. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26114269

⭐️53. Into The Drowning Deep by Mira Grant: Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary, bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a tragedy; others have called it a hoax. Now, a new crew has been assembled to investigate. And they’ll discover that whatever is down there is definitely no joke… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34523174

⭐️54. True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik: Suzy and her brother, Lim, live with their abusive mother in a town where the stars don’t shine at night. Once the abuse becomes too much to handle, the two siblings embark on a sordid cross-country murder spree beginning with their mom. As the murder tally rises, Suzy’s mental state spirals into irredeemable madness. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48808041

⭐️55. Mina by Kim Sagwa: Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, and vexing her boyfriends. Her non- stop frenzy never manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She hasn’t talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina’s brother, whom she’s developing a crush on. And Crystal’s starting to lose her grip… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41555892

⭐️56. Security by Gina Wohlsdorf: Manderley Resort is a gleaming, new twenty-story hotel on the California coast. It’s about to open its doors, and the world- at least those with the means to afford it- will be welcomed into a palace of opulence and unparalleled security. But someone is determined that Manderley will never open. The staff has no idea that their every move is being watched, and over the next twelve hours they will be killed off, one by one. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25810610

⭐️57. The Unforeseen by Dorothy Macardle: In 1938, Virgilia Wilde, an Irish writer, leaves England to begin a new life in the tranquil setting of Wicklow with her daughter Nan. As strange visions threaten those around her, Virgilia must decide if she can intervene and prevent tragedies to come, or if her worst fears must play out as she helplessly looks on… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1731337

⭐️58. The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher: Whilst clearing out her dead grandmother’s house, Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which seems like nonsense until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42527596

⭐️59. The Possession of Natalie Glasgow by Hailey Piper: Margaret has never met an 11 year-old as dangerous as Natalie who spends her days comatose- at night prowling her mother’s home, unnaturally strong and insatiably carnivorous. With doctors baffled, Natalie’s mother reaches out to Margaret, an expert in the supernatural. But even Margaret is mystified and terrified by Natalie’s condition. She’s dying, and before she dies, she might kill someone. Has a demon clawed its way inside an 11 year-old girl? Or does the source of this nightmare lie with Natalie’s dead father? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49244913

⭐️60. The Very Best of Caitlin R Kienan: Caitlìn R. Kiernan is one of dark fantasy and horror’s most acclaimed and influential short fiction writers. Her stories shatter morality, gender, and sexuality: a reporter is goaded by her toxic girlfriend into visiting sadistic art exhibits; a countess in a decaying movie theater is sated by her servants; a collector offers his greatest achievement to ensnare a musician who grieves for her missing sister. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39720095

⭐️61. The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring: Looming at the very southern tip of Patagonia, the Vacarro family’s finishing school is rumoured to be haunted. When Mavi arrives for a teaching position, she’s determined to write off the initial signs. But the spirits haunting it won’t be ignored, and a cruel fate seems inescapable. One of these spirits befriends Mavi in hopes of redemption; but the spirit’s dark secret changes everything. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42642111

⭐️62. The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes: The Kevinian cult has taken everything from Minnow. And when she rebelled, they took away her hands, too. Now their Prophet has been murdered and their camp set aflame, and it’s clear that Minnow knows something-but she’s not talking. As she languishes in juvenile detention, she struggles to un-learn everything she has been taught to believe, adjusting to a life behind bars and recounting the events that led up to her incarceration. But when an FBI detective approaches her about making a deal, Minnow sees she can have the freedom she always dreamed of-if she’s willing to part with the terrible secrets of her past. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17185496

⭐️63. Blood Countess by Lana Popovic: A historical YA horror novel based on the infamous real-life inspiration for Countess Dracula- Countess Elizabeth Bathory. When Elizabeth takes a liking to Anna, she’s vaulted to the dream role of chambermaid and the Countess begins to groom Anna. Isolated from her former friends, family, and fiancé, Anna realizes she’s not a friend but a prisoner of the increasingly cruel Elizabeth. Then come the murders, and Anna knows it’s only a matter of time before the Blood Countess turns on her, too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43908877

⭐️64. Through The Woods by Emily Carroll: Discover a terrifying world in the woods in this collection of five hauntingly beautiful graphic stories that includes the online webcomic sensation “His Face All Red,” in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House”- though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret. You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18659623

⭐️65. Viscera by Gabrielle Squailia: The Gone-Away gods were real, once, and taller than towers. But they’re long dead now, buried in the catacombs beneath the city of Eth, where their calcified organs radiate an eldritch power that calls out to anyone hardy enough to live in this cutthroat, war-torn land. Some survivors are human, while others are close enough, but all are struggling to carve out their lives in a world both unforgiving and wondrous. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32077461

⭐️66. Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq: A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 70s. She knows joy and love, boredom and bullying. She knows the ravages of alcohol and violence. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this. Veering between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the animal world and the ravishing world of myth, Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40044460

⭐️67. Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer: Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet- her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out. But when she decides to save him, she ends up sold in his place- because Nita herself isn’t exactly “human.” Now on the other side of the bars, if she wants to escape, Nita must ask herself if she’s willing to become the worst kind of monster. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34324484

⭐️68. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara: When four graduates from a small college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, is Jude himself, by midlife an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22822858

⭐️69. White Fox by Sara Faring: Tai, seventeen, and Manon, eighteen, lured to the Mediterranean island from which their world-famous mother mysteriously vanished a decade earlier, discover her lost screenplay, White Fox, which reveals clues to the truth… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52750504

⭐️70. Wilder Girls by Rory Power: It’s been 18 months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes; their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing. But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her best friend, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie in the wilderness past the fence… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42505366

⭐️71. Eartheater by Dolores Reyes: Electrifying and provocative, visceral and profound, a powerful literary debut novel about a young woman whose compulsion to eat earth gives her visions of murdered and missing people- an imaginative synthesis of mystery and magical realism that explores the dark tragedies of ordinary lives. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51475366

⭐️72. There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbours Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya: A woman finds herself filling a pit in the forest in the middle of the night; a family lock each other in their bedrooms to battle a strange plague; a wizard punishes two beautiful ballerinas by turning them into one hugely fat circus performer; a colonel is warned not to lift the veil from his dead wife’s face; and a distraught father brings his daughter back to life by eating human hearts in his dreams. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6490566

⭐️73. My Mother’s House by Francesca Momplaisir: When Lucien flees Haiti with his family to NYC he buys a rundown house, La Kaye, which becomes a place where fellow immigrants can find peace, a good meal, and legal help. But as a severely emotionally damaged man, Lucien soon falls into his worst habits and impulses, with La Kaye as the backdrop. What he can’t imagine is that the house is watching, passing judgment, and deciding to put an end to all the sins it has been made to hold. But only after it has set itself aflame will frightened whispers reveal Lucien’s ultimate evil. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49959234

⭐️74. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino: Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo. 20 years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them. But in a world of dark desire and vicious ambition, for both women, prostitution meant power. A masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women’s secret lives in modern day Japan. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25366

⭐️75. The Year of The Witching by Alexis Henderson: Born on the fringes of Bethel, Immanuelle does her best to obey the Church and follow Holy Protocol. And then a chance encounter lures her into the Darkwood that surrounds Bethel. It is a forbidden place, haunted by the spirits of the witches who bestow an extraordinary gift on Immanuelle. The diary of her dead mother. Fascinated by and fearful of the secrets the diary reveals, Immanuelle begins to understand why her mother once consorted with witches. And as the truth about the Prophets, the Church and their history is revealed, Immanuelle understands what must be done. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49789629

⭐️76. The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao: Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella’s poisoning of their whole clan. As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking and brutal act. Was it their aunt’s mysterious death at sea? Estella’s unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46221974

⭐️77. The Good House by Tananarive Due: The home that belonged to Angela‘s late grandmother is so beloved that townspeople in Sacajawea, call it the Good House. But that all changes one summer when an unexpected tragedy takes place behind its closed doors… But now, Angela is finally ready to return to her hometown and go beyond the grave to unearth the truth about Corey’s death. Could it be related to a terrifying entity Angela’s grandmother battled seven decades ago? Has Angela’s grandmother, an African American woman reputed to have “powers,” put a curse on the entire community? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41539

⭐️78. Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw: John is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. As Persons investigates McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30199328

⭐️79. My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: When Korede’s dinner is interrupted by a call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that she has been left to clear away. She should probably go to the police but family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. But to save one would mean sacrificing the other… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38819868

⭐️80. Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis: Lola is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker – nothing can scare her. But when her father is brutally attacked she’s packed off to live with a grandmother she’s never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father’s most iconic horror movie was shot. The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film- and there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away. And there’s someone – or something – stalking Lola’s every move. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49183687

⭐️81. A Collection Of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng: an exploration of the darkness inside us, the shadow-self that screams and begs, forever fighting to claw itself out. It’s a siren song of transformation, an uncovered diary that bleeds fairy tales and dystopias, and it reads like a grimoire full of spells and curses that bring monsters and madmen to life. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51374911

⭐️82. Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power: Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And when she finds a photograph pointing her to a town called Phalene, she leaves. But when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for. Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52748041

⭐️83. Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge: When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is wrong. She is insatiably hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind closed doors. Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37765413

⭐️84. Lost Boy by Christina Henry: There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan’s first—and favourite—lost boy to his greatest enemy. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32828538

⭐️85. Horrid by Katrina Leno: Following her father’s death, Jane and her mom move to the old house where her mother grew up. But behind it’s doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling alone and tormented. Jane’s mom seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but won’t reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the ‘storage room’ her mom has kept locked is a little girl’s bedroom, left untouched and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358142

⭐️86. Graveyard smash, women of horror anthology, volume 2: Step through the prettiest cemetery gates you’ve ever seen and experience tombstone raves and widow’s dances, Japanese snow-spirits, Aztec bruja and temple goddesses, vengeful ghosts, djinn and cannibals, vampire hunters, plague bearers, graverobbers, and terrors beyond reason. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54576827

⭐️87. Hold Back The Tide by Melinda Salisbury: Everyone knows what happened to Alva’s mother, all those years ago. But when dark forces begin to stir in Ormscaula, Alva has to face a very different future – and question everything she thought she knew about her past… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51828348

⭐️88. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo: Alex is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime. But a free ride to one of the world’s most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch. Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale’s secret societies. Now there’s a dead girl on campus and Alex knows the secret societies are far more sinister and extraordinary than anyone ever imagined… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263680

⭐️89. Foul Is Fair by Hannah Capin: Jade and her three best friends rule their glittering LA circle. Until the night four boys spike Jade’s drink, lock her in a room and attack her. But they chose the wrong girl. Jade is made of claws and fangs and cruel sharp edges. Jade will have them clutching at their throats and choking on blood.

She wants revenge. She has no mercy. And now she won’t rest until she gets satisfaction. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42595554

⭐️90. Wicked Saints by Emily A Duncan: When Nadya prays to the gods, they listen, and magic flows through her veins. For nearly a century the Kalyazi have been locked in a deadly holy war with Tranavian heretics, and her power is the only thing that is a match for the enemy’s blood magic. But when the High Prince, and his army invade the monestry she is hiding in, Nadya is forced to flee, leaving it in flames behind her, and vengeance in her heart. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36118682

⭐️91. Salt Slow by Julia Armfield: Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42870948

⭐️92. Cutting Edge edited by Carol Joyce Oates: Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her eye to the curation of an anthology of brand-new short stories. While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy readers who are sick and tired of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45837710

⭐️93. Get in trouble by Kelly Link: Fantastical and utterly incomparable, Get in Trouble rummages in the cupboards of our psyches and pulls out fierce truths about everything from the essence of ghosts to the nature of love. And hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the pyramids . . . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22125258

⭐️94. Mouthful Of Birds by Samanta Schweblin: The crunch of a bird’s wing. A cloud of butterflies, so beautiful it smothers. A crimson flash of blood across an artist’s canvas. Spine-tingling and unexpected, unearthly and strange, the stories here are impossible to forget. Schweblin’s writing blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday, pulling the reader into a world that is at once nightmarish and beautiful. An exhilarating tour de force guaranteed to leave the pulse racing. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39872813

⭐️95. The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht: A thing without a name stalks the city of Elendhaven- shaped like a man, with a dark heart and long pale fingers yearning to wrap around throats. A monster who cannot die. His frail master sends him on errands, twisting him with magic, crafting a cruel plan, while the monster’s heart grows fonder and colder and more cunning. These monsters of Elendhaven will have their revenge on everyone who wronged the city, even if they have to burn the world to do it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263515

⭐️96. Betty Bites Back edited by Mindy McGinnis: The news in the past few years has been full of women – nasty women, angry women, persistent women, women in pink knitted hats. There’s been pushback, but there’s also been overwhelming support. With this anthology we wanted to add our own encouragement. This collection of sixteen tales comes from writers who picked up their pens to add their words to the resistance. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41591785

⭐️97. The Grace Year by Kim Liggett: Tierney lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at 16 to the northern forest to brave the wilderness – and each other – for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry – if they’re lucky. It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them – if they survive it… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263520

⭐️98. Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver: In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens. Maud is a lonely child, without a mother, ruled by her repressive father. When he finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened. She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen – and the even more nightmarish demons of her father’s past. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40725252

⭐️99. When I Arrived At The Castle by Emily Carroll: Like many before her that have never come back, she’s made it to the Countess’ castle determined to snuff out the horror, but she could never be prepared for what hides within its turrets; what unfurls under its fluttering flags. Emily Carroll has fashioned a rich gothic horror charged with eroticism that doesn’t just make your skin crawl, it crawls into it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42198117

⭐️100. Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings: In a small Western Queensland town, a young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers that makes her question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure. A story that proves gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live and thrive under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46184288

⭐️101. Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman. Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense. Brought up by unfriendly nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42036538