The Goth Garden by Felicia Feaster is a gorgeous art book that just happens to be packed full of history, lore, growing guidance, and uses of fifty plants and flowers to add to your very own goth garden - or at least to your bookshelf.

Blood Ties is the perfect action adventure horror romance to read while waiting for WoW: Midnight to drop or if you’ve never played the game. Christie Golden does a masterful job describing enough of the world and characters for those unfamiliar with the game but not so much that fans will get bored.

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.

Tell Me What You Did by Carter Wilson wasted no time building tension as we realize within the first lines that something is wrong.

Poe witnessed her mother’s murder when she was 13 years old, and now she hosts her own true crime podcast where she invites criminals to, as anonymously as they like, confess their crimes.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner by Jennifer Hayden is a hand-drawn memoir peppered with tongue-in-cheek (but potentially technically edible if you squint) recipes about how much she hates cooking. Every single night. In perpetuity.

Anyone who writes anything for any reason has experienced the dead stare of a blank page at some point, and some of my favorite fiction has explored that feeling.

Though comparisons to Stephen King will surely be made by any horror fan - Philip Fracassi himself peppers allusions to King and his works within the novel - Gothic is more than a “man with writer’s block becomes unhinged” story which is obvious right away when the opening chapter is dedicated to the search for the artifact which is the catalyst for said writer’s madness.

Like Peyton Place, like Derry, there is something dark under the surface of the seemingly idyllic small town of Wilson Island.

Bones of Our Stars, Blood of Our World by Cullen Bunn is an engrossing thriller and cosmic horror novel that follows the inhabitants of Wilson Island as the community is terrorized by a serial killer - until they realize that’s the least of the horrors that they face.

The teenage years can be hard. You have to worry about dating and friendships and family and things and people changing, growing, and it can feel like everyone is moving on without you and you’re all alone. Sometimes you feel like you may not even recognize your friends as they develop interests apart from you or a new relationship. What happens when the reason you don’t recognize them is because they really aren’t themselves anymore?

The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg is a charming collection of speculative stories about love, connection, family, life, death, and more, with lyrical languages and ranging from fantasy to horror to magical realism to sci-fi to a beautiful folkloric tale within a tale.

A mix of horror, mystery, and dark humor, with a dash of nostalgia thanks to the mid-90s setting, this second entry in the Bless Your Heart series is as comforting as a cozy mystery - though the body count and some descriptions of gore - not to mention the snark of high school homecoming queen wannabes - probably bump it out of the cozy category.

Every neighborhood has a haunted house, and in thirteen-year-old Jessie’s neighborhood, that’s the McIntyre place, and like any teenager, she just wants her eight-year-old brother Paul to go away so she can listen to her music, so she dares him to go into the McIntyre place just to get him out of her hair for a few hours. She had no way of knowing she would never see him again or that it would destroy her family.

“Stories are medicine,” says Cynthia Pelayo in her story, “We Women Speak of Wolves” from Howl, the new werewolf anthology edited by Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich, and reading these stories made me feel the truth in that.

Howl is a powerful collection by women authors with a thread of werewolves, but they’re really about power, strength, love, hate, bodies, sex, hunger, desire, loneliness, fear, rage, and the aspects of those that are inherent to womanhood.

Hazelthorn by C. G. Drews is a Gothic tale complete with the classics, a crumbling mansion, mysterious atmosphere, and creepy family members, and modern trappings such as a queer romance, botanical body horror, and being othered - so, yes, it is right up my alley.

The 31st Trick-or-Treater by Ben Farthing was intended to be read as a Halloween advent, one chapter a day - passing as if in real time, and, as such, it was very effective.

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 House Saphir by Marissa Meyer is a thrilling reimagining of the Bluebeard story with a tough, funny heroine and filled with magic, romance, and all the gothic-y goodness of the folktale that inspired it.

Witches of Dubious Origin by Jenn McKinlay is a cozy witchy fantasy filled with libraries, curses, and romance - like all the best cozy witchy books.

Psychopomp and Circumstance by Eden Royce is a quiet Southern Gothic tale of family secrets and the power of choice that takes place in an alternate magic-filled version of Reconstruction-era South Carolina.

Herculine by Grace Byron is a funny, sad, horrific story about friends, family, and being sacrificed to or otherwise ripped apart by demons.

And bonus points for the reference to the dark Americana popularized by shows like Twin Peaks. I don’t even like pie, but, thanks to Dale Cooper, I always want to have pie in diners.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is a thrilling, time-traveling fantasy adventure about the lust for power and the power of love, about heroes and villains, about history and mythology and the stories we tell and how those stories change us and the world.