Thrilling Horror and Suspense Novels for Summerween
By Erin Roll
It seems a little odd to be thinking about scary stories when it’s still summer–or is it?
It’s true, though: the stores are already setting out Halloween candy and fall decorations, and pumpkin spice season will be on us in a scared (pun definitely intended, gentle readers) second.
But why wait until Halloween to enjoy a good scary story? Hair-raising page-turners are not specific to just one time of year. (After all, in Charles Dickens’s time, Christmas was the traditional time for telling ghost stories, hence A Christmas Carol.)
The summer months are a veritable gold mine for scary stories. Think about it. How many scary stories involve monsters (either supernatural or human) at summer camp? Or beach trips gone horribly wrong? (Come visit beautiful Amity Beach: site of the original Shark Week.) Or a beautiful sunny island getaway that goes from idyllic to horrific when the visitors realize there’s a murderer among them, and there’s no way off?
Break out the sunscream—er, that is, sunscreen—and scare up some of these chilling reads on a hot day.
Secrets abound in El Valle, a tiny town near the Salton Sea, and many girls and young women have gone missing. Twenty years ago, Malamar Veracruz’s sister Elena disappeared, and no one knows what happened to her. Mal is trying to move on with life, raising and supporting a family. But old wounds are reopened when another girl vanishes the same way Elena did. And Mal keeps seeing visions of a mysterious horse-headed woman. Is this spirit somehow connected to the girls’ disappearances, or are other forces at play?
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 22, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
For Bimbo and his four friends in Puerto Rico, death–both by causes natural and unnatural–has always been a fact of life. But things change when Bimbo’s mother Maria is shot and killed, and Bimbo takes it on himself to find out what happened and to avenge his mother. The boys will have to face enemies both human and from nature; Maria’s murder was at the behest of a powerful drug kingpin, and at that very moment, a dangerous hurricane is forming off the coast.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 6, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
What do a difficult ex-boyfriend and a punk battle of the bands have to do with the future of the entire universe? Quite a bit, actually, especially when said ex-boyfriend happens to be the Antichrist. The Shivers were a punk band that were on the up and up in the late 90s and the 2000s, until one day, Lily Lawless went to a police station and confessed to a murder. The band has stayed mum since, but now, Lily is prepared to speak out about what happened–and the tale she and the band tell could literally be one hell of a story.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 1, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When twenty-year-old Jesse Calloway was two-years-old, he was found next to a river–and the dead body of his mother, Connie. Eighteen years later, someone called “Cat” has been reaching out to Jesse claiming to know the truth about what happened. Cat promises to tell Jesse everything, but only if Jesse comes back to Blacknot, North Carolina: the town where he grew up and later fled from. And it soon becomes clear that a lot of people in town are none too thrilled about Jesse trying to dig up the past.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 22, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
There is a certain mushroom known as The King’s Breakfast. One bite will supposedly grant you the knowledge of the entire universe and the ability to communicate with the divine and the supernatural. But it grows only in a dark and mysterious forest where countless people have disappeared. Sarah is a trans woman who makes a living as a mushroom grower, and her business is now in dire straits. So when a client promises to pay her big money to find The King’s Breakfast, she accepts. She ventures into the forest with her disapproving (and annoying) friend Andy. Soon, they discover that they are not alone, and that a mysterious cult that worships the divine feminine lives deep within the forest.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 2, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Parts of Appalachia are being taken over by the Infestation: mass swarms of parasitic worms and flies. In this destroyed world, the hives can give a select few humans a chance to start over, but at a price. Crane is one such human, and his new life is a good one, even if he can’t speak. But when Crane becomes pregnant, the Infestation demands that Crane carry his child to term and then sacrifice it. Crane is determined to fight back, even if it is a struggle that means certain death and destruction.
Format
Trade Cloth; Trade Cloth
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 9, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
T. Kingfisher continues the Sworn Soldier series with WHAT STALKS THE DEEP. Alex Easton does not want to go on a mission into the abandoned coal mines of West Virginia, especially since the mines are believed to be haunted. But Dr. Denton needs their help, because his cousin went missing in one of those mines. And as a sworn soldier, Alex knows that this is a mission that they cannot turn down.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 30, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Stephen Graham Jones’s book combines two scary tales in one: KILLER ON THE ROAD and THE BABYSITTER LIVES. In THE BABYSITTER LIVES, on the night before Halloween (and the SATs), Charlotte tries to get some last-minute SAT prep done while babysitting the six-year-old Wilbanks twins. But as the night goes on, strange things begin to happen, and they’re connected to something horrible that happened in the house eleven years ago. In KILLER ON THE ROAD, Harper has a massive argument with her mother and decides to run away from home. Her friends, little sister, and ex-boyfriend decide to stage an intervention, cleverly disguised as a road trip through Wyoming. But with a serial killer trailing them, it could be the end of the road for the whole group.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 15, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
New York City during the COVID-19 lockdown is a strange and haunted place to be. Cora Zeng works as a crime scene cleaner around Chinatown, and she’s seen some of the worst of what humanity can do. But nothing can prepare her for seeing her sister get pushed to her death in front of a train–and the murderer shouted “bat eater”. Cora tries to figure out what happened to her sister while continuing with her work and preparing for the upcoming Hungry Ghost Festival. But Cora can’t help notice that at all the crime scenes she has been called to, the victims are all East Asian women, and a bat carcass has been left at the scene.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around April 29, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When the woman now known as Stella O’Neil was ten years old, she saw her mother brutally murdered in the Vermont commune where the two lived. She’s tried to eke out a new life under a new name, but all that is upended when a true-crime buff posts her real name and location on the internet. Her mother’s killer now knows where she lives, and is intent on killing her as well. Stella flees her home in Boston and heads back to Vermont. In her possession is a treasured item her mother left to her: a rose quartz pendulum useful in divining work. Stella will need the pendulum and all of her wits as she confronts the commune’s controlling leader and figures out who killed her mother.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 1, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
After the death of their estranged mother Alex, Clio Barnes and her sisters inherit their childhood home: a house that Alex always insisted was possessed by a demon, though her daughters never believed any of her claims. The other two sisters only have unhappy memories of the house, but Clio plans to remodel the house and put it up for sale–it’d be perfect for her career as a stylist and influencer. But during the remodel, as old memories come back, Clio finally reads the book Alex wrote about the house, and realizes that some of her mother’s claims about the house being demonically possessed just may be true.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 9, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Striker is on a luxury cruise sailing around Antarctica, but unlike most of the passengers, she’s there on business: she’s scouting locations for an upcoming film about Ernest Shackleton. Furthermore, she is a Black woman on a ship full of mostly white people. When a kayaking trip goes horribly wrong, Striker and a handful of other passengers are left stranded on a remote island. It is there on the island, amid the harsh unforgiving terrain, deadly wildlife, and thawing ice, that people will start to reveal their true natures, including secrets and prejudices that they have tried to keep hidden.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 14, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In 1700s London, orphan girls Emily and Eleanor became the “wards” of Elizabeth, a much sought-after courtesan. Close to three centuries later, antiques dealer Alys is on the hunt for a set of three “anatomical Venuses”: life-sized wax figures used by male medical students to study female anatomy. According to legend, the three “slashed beauties”, as they were also known, would come to life and murder the men who wronged them. Alys discovers that she has a connection to the three figures, and she realizes the only way to sever the connection and end the curse is to destroy them. But Elizabeth’s spirit is determined not to let that happen.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 23, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Erin Roll is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Her favorite genres to read are mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, and her TBR pile is likely to be visible on Google Maps. Before becoming an editor, Erin worked as a journalist and photographer, and she has won far too many awards from the New Jersey Press Association.Erin lives at the top floor of a haunted house in Montclair, NJ. She enjoys reading (of course), writing, hiking, kayaking, music, and video games.
