Tim McGregor wastes no time introducing us to the realities of daily life in and around the 1821 Rhode Island village of Wickstead where Hearts Strange and Dreadful is set, and in the same strokes that prepare the lamb for the Stokely family meals, we know what's what in the Stokely household, especially when it comes to the 17-year-old narrator Hester Stokely, cousin and adopted sister to the children of the family since her parents died in the same housefire which scarred her face when she was 12.

Whether it's virus erotica like Spread Me or cult/folk horror like Make Me Better, Sarah Gailey has an ability to write characters who behave in odd, sometimes off-putting, ways that seem reasonable in the character's voice which is only multiplied by Xe Sands melodic narration.

The heroine in A Vow for Breaking by L.M. Riviere is Sloane McIntyre, a sharp, smart, poor young Irish woman from Boston who has inherited a demon as a constant companion - whether she wants him or not - and thanks to her witch ancestor, he doesn’t have much choice either.

Come Sing for the Harrowing by Dan Coxon brings all the folk horror it promises in its title (and the title of the first story) and its cover art. It also brings body horror, cosmic horror, the supernatural, and ROCK AND ROLL! and addresses topics like mental illness, generational trauma, and body dysmorphia. And they say horror is not “real” literature.

The first page of Carter Keane’s Morsel provides some content warnings, but what I could have used was some advice: Remember to breathe. The tension was so effective that several times, I became the cliché and had to release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

The Salvage by Anbara Salam is a gothic, feminist, folk horror, haunted ship, Sapphic love story with elements of Cold War hysteria and an increasingly unreliable narrator - and it was totally engaging. 

It’s 1962, and Marta Khoury’s young marriage is over, in part due to her affair with and the accidental drowning of her husband (and boss)’s friend Lewis, on a remote Scottish island where he was from. Soon after, Marta, a marine archaeologist, has a chance to salvage a ship from the 1800s off the coast of that same island, Cairnroch, to recover the remains and effects of “Auld James”, ancestor of the Purdies, who own or control most of the town. 

I’ll Make a Spectacle of You by Beatrice Winifred Iker is a chilling Southern Gothic folk horror novel primarily set in and around the fictional Bricksbury University, a historically black college in Jonesborough, TN, in the heart of Appalachia.

A mix of folk horror and true crime - if you’re me, that’s enough to draw you in - but what makes The Sound of the Dark by Daniel Church special is the characters - especially relatable heroine Cally Darker.

The Haunting of Payne’s Hollow by Kelley Armstrong has a classic horror premise: to earn a family inheritance from her grandfather, Samantha Payne must stay at the family’s lakeside cottage for one month.

Though it’s a modern gothic (unlike the A.G.Slatter Sourdough books I’ve read), The Cold House has the one thing that keeps me reading her works: a smart, snarky, relatable heroine.