All the New Horror Books Coming in June 2024

June’s new horror books include It-Girl body horror, a cannibalistic Korean diaspora thriller, desperate survival at a conversion camp, an experimental ghost story, haunted house reality TV, several cursed horror films, and much, much more.

These monthly lists are derived from my annual masterlist, but I’ve gotten a good amount of feedback saying the smaller lists are helpful reminders and easier to digest–they can all be found here. And as always, you can view the full 2024 list right here. Want an email every time I publish one of these lists? Subscribe here!

June 2024’s new horror books:

• Dead Endings, Henry Ben Edom (Jun 1, Swann + Bedlam): A chilling collection that delves deep into realms of darkness and misery, blighted landscapes of macabre malaise and moral terror, black forests of primordial fear where carrion birds cavort with killers by the freshly-churned soil of violated graves where the rotting bodies of teenage suicides languish in Purgatory eternal.
• Gig of the Damned: Slay the Competition, Phrique (Jun 1): One pageant, one winner, and one Queen hell-bent on snatching that crown by any means necessary. Gamble Donna Phart is a fishy little drag queen aiming to make a splash in a pool of tenacious, bloodthirsty sharks. Despite that, she’s determined to shake up the food chain at the upcoming Trick’d & Treated pageant. So when a fierce, masked killer starts slaying the competition one by one, it’s every hunty for herself. Luck be a lady-killer tonight, for there can be only one Queen.
• Where the Worm Never Dies, Quinn Hernandez (Jun 1, Swann + Bedlam): A story collection that beckons you to explore the uncanny and the inexplicable, offering a chilling narrative of horror and despair, a symphony of fear that resonates in your soul. These verses are an invitation to confront your deepest fears and embrace the terror that lies hidden within the recesses of your imagination. Be prepared for an unforgettable odyssey into the heart of darkness.
• Small Hearts, Bryan Wayne Dull (Jun 3, Anthropolis): Haunted by the tragic loss of her third-grade students in a school shooting, Emily Sinclair, a secluded teacher, grapples with the ghosts of her past. As she battles the anxiety of stepping outside and confronting the judgmental eyes of her town, she discovers a chilling presence lurking in the shadows–an eerie manifestation of her deceased students and ghostly apparitions she dubs “the pales,” drawing closer with every hesitant step. Questioning her own sanity, Emily turns to psychiatrist Paul Cusick, unraveling her story as an educator facing the seemingly unteachable. Yet, in the unraveling, the line between reality and perception blurs, revealing a twisted truth beyond imagination.
• The Boy from Two Worlds, Jason Offutt (Jun 4, CamCat): The sequel to Jason Offutt’s award-winning novel, The Girl in the Corn, which critics have raved is “an outstanding blend of horror, speculative fiction, and apocalyptic fantasy topped with madness” (HorrorDNA) and “a haunting, unsettling, gripping novel” (Richard Thomas, a Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson nominee).
• Brat, Gabriel Smith (Jun 4, Penguin Press): From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.
• Grim Root, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Jun 4, Dark Matter INK): A darkly humorous gothic horror novel pitched as The Bachelor meets The Haunting of Hill House, in which a group of women on a reality TV dating show must compete for the hand of an eligible bachelor by spending a week in a haunted house, but after the bachelor suddenly dies to the shock of everyone on set, the remaining contestants find themselves trapped in a dark and twisted new game only one of them still wants to play.
• Lockjaw, Matteo L. Cerilli (Jun 4, Tundra Books): Death is neither the beginning nor the end for the children of Bridlington in this debut trans YA horror book for fans of Rory Power and Danielle Vega.
• No Gods, Only Chaos, L. P. Hernandez (Jun 4, DarkLit): L.P. Hernandez weaves a tapestry of darkness, plunging the reader into worlds steeped in the macabre and eerie. Within these tales are human monsters searching for purpose, realities on the brink, and an old god waiting for a bargain. The book lures readers into the depths of human fear and the unknown, promising a journey along pathways as haunting as they are unforgettable. This collection is a chilling exploration of the darkness of the human psyche, created for those who find solace in the night’s deepest shadows.
• Small Town Horror, Ronald Malfi (Jun 4, Titan): Five childhood friends are forced to confront their own dark past as well as the curse placed upon them in this horror masterpiece from the bestselling author of Come with Me.
• Take All of Us, Natalie Leif (Jun 4, Holiday House): A YA unbury-your-gays horror in which an undead teen must find the boy he loves before he loses his mind and body.
• youthjuice, E.K. Sathue (Jun 4, Soho Press): American Psycho meets The Devil Wears Prada: outrageous body horror for the goop generation. A bloodthirsty copywriter realizes that beauty is possible—at a terrible cost—in this surreal, satirical send-up of NYC It-girl culture.
• A Dark and Endless Sea, Blaine Daigle (Jun 7, Wicked House): Whitt Rogers has been dreaming. Horrible dreams. Dreams that stretch the very fabric of the real and the unreal as he is pulled by a voice across the country to a small crab fishing ship set to depart into the Bering Sea. At sea, the memories piece themselves together in cracked fragments. But there is something out there. Something speaking to Whitt in his dreams. A voice from a long-forgotten memory that promises peace at the cost of madness. A voice that leads to a place unimaginable and inescapable.
• Song of the Tyrant Worm, Hailey Piper (Jun 8, Off Limits): Time breaks and starlight dies beneath uncompromising gods in this reality-shattering conclusion to The Worm and His Kings saga.
• Cinderwich, Cherie Priest (Jun 11, Apex Book Co): Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree? Decades after trespassing children spotted the desiccated corpse wedged in the treetop, no one knows the answer. Kate Thrush and her former college professor, Dr. Judith Kane, travel to Cinderwich, Tennessee in hopes that maybe it was their Ellen: Katie’s lost aunt, Judith’s long-gone lover. But they’re not the only ones to have come here looking for closure. The people of Cinderwich, a town hardly more than a skeleton itself, are staunchly resistant to the outsiders’ questions about Ellen and her killer. And the deeper the two women dig, the more rot they unearth … the closer they come to exhuming the evil that lies, hungering, at the roots of Cinderwich.
• Crimson Cobblestones, Marie Lestrange (Jun 11, Crimson Cult): In this chilling tale, a young woman’s defiant quest to uncover the truth pits her against powerful forces of deception. Can she expose the secrets behind the deaths before she’s silenced forever? Vividly conjuring the macabre underbelly of colonial America, this spine-tingling gothic thriller will keep you guessing until its shocking finale!
• Cuckoo, Gretchen Felker-Martin (Jun 11, Nightfire): A vicious new novel from acclaimed Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin, where a group of kidnapped kids must stay true to themselves in a conversion camp from hell.
• Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay (Jun 11, William Morrow): A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World. Horror Movie is obsessive, psychologically chilling, and breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
• Mouth, Puloma Ghosh (Jun 11, Astra House): In this debut collection, Puloma Ghosh uses the speculative as a catalyst to push her stories and characters beyond what reality allows. Exploring grief, intimacy, sexuality, and bodily autonomy, Mouth leans into the bizarre and absurd while reaching for the truth.
• One of Our Kind, Nicola Yoon (Jun 11, Knopf): Get Out meets The Stepford Wives in #1 New York Times best-selling author Nicola Yoon’s first adult novel – a terrifying and thought-provoking look at what it means to be truly free in America as a woman uncovers a secret about her new home in a planned Black utopian community.
• Pippin’s Journal, Rohan O’Grady (Jun 11, Valancourt): A spellbinding Gothic page-turner, Rohan O’Grady’s Pippin’s Journal (1962) received rave reviews on its initial publication and returns to print at last to enchant and terrify a new generation of readers.​
• When the Night Falls, Glenn Rolfe (Jun 11, Flame Tree): Rocky Zukas lives with the ghosts of what happens when you fall in love with a monster. Lucky to be alive, Rocky roams his beachside hometown living on autopilot, waiting for life to start again. November Riley has never been far from the boy that stole her heart. She watches from the shadows, knowing she can never make things right between them, but never giving up on the chance they could try one more time. A new documentary is bringing Gabriel Riley, the Beach Night Killer, back to national consciousness. The dead serial killer has a trio of new fans that are ready to make Old Orchard Beach, Maine their home for the end of the summer season. When the new strangers in town discover Rocky’s relationship to the past of one of their own, he becomes their number one target. Can November protect him, or will these other vampires prove too strong? When the night falls, blood will spill, and death will reign.
• Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, Ananda Lima (Jun 18, Tor): An intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima. At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true. Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as “singular and wise and fresh” (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
• How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, Craig DiLouie (Jun 18, Redhook): From Bram Stoker Award‑nominated author Craig DiLouie comes a darkly humorous horror novel that sees a famous 80s slasher director set out to shoot the most terrifying horror movie ever made using an occult camera that might be (and probably is) demonic.
• Middle of the Night, Riley Sager (Jun 18, Dutton): In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend–and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
• We Used to Live Here, Marcus Kliewer (Jun 18, Atria/Emily Bestler): The Turn of the Key meets Parasite in this eerily haunting debut and Reddit hit—soon to be a Netflix original movie starring Blake Lively—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
• Hollow Tongue, Eden Royce (Jun 20, Raw Dog Screaming): After a major accident leaves her in a dire financial situation, Maxine Forrest returns to live in her childhood home. The empty husk holds only the memories of her father’s abuse and her mother’s reticence to leave him: her parents are nowhere to be found. The cocoon of her past remains unchanged, yet wrapped in the ghostly remnants of her mother’s whispered insistence that things could change. Escaping the sins of her parents should be easy enough for Max, but those sins are intrinsic to her genetic make-up, so escape is impossible—succumbing, and metamorphosis, are inevitable.
• The Haunting of Harry Peck, David-Jack Fletcher (Jun 22, Lethe): Reader, be warned: Chickens are deadly. Each year, chicken consumption threatens over a million people. Harry Peck is an unfortunate, well-meaning young fellow who kills a chicken at the urging of his uncle, a farmer. But Harry does not know his family’s weird history or that the spirit of the fowl beast would start scratching at the floorboards, the clucking coming from the darkness. As the haunting worsens, it becomes clear that the chicken wants vengeance. Harry finds himself relying on the mysterious and handsome Vegan Shaman to survive.
• When I Look to the Sky, All I See Are Stars, Steve Stred (Jun 24, Darklit Press): A visceral, edge-of-your-seat novella, When I Look to the Sky, All I See Are Stars is everything you’d expect from 2X Splatterpunk-nominated author Steve Stred. Frantic pacing, hooves and horns and the growing dread that what lies beyond this plane is a land filled with ash and a place we never want to visit.
• Black Easter, James Blish (Jun 25, Valancourt): Theron Ware is a renowned scholar and Doctor of Divinity. He is also secretly one of the world’s great Black magicians. And when a rich megalomaniac industrialist, Baines, enlists his aid in summoning a demon from Hell to assassinate the governor of California (in an “excess of horror”), Ware has no scruples about accepting the assignment. But this terrible and devilish deed is only a warm-up, a test from Baines to see whether Ware can help him to accomplish his ultimate purpose: opening the gates of Hell and allowing the legions of infernal demons to overrun the world… Best known as a science fiction writer, James Blish (1921-1975) shows a darker side in this 1968 classic, a harrowing tale that blends horror, science fiction, fantasy, and a generous dose of black humor.
• The Eyes Are The Best Part, Monika Kim (Jun 25, Erewhon): A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.
• Foul Days, Genoveva Dimova (Jun 25, Tor): The Witcher meets Naomi Novik in this fast-paced fantasy rooted in Slavic folklore, from an assured new voice in genre.
• Incidents Around the House, Josh Malerman (Jun 25, Del Rey): A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box.
• Invaginies, Joe Koch (Jun 25, CLASH): The Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author returns with a new collection of literary horror and weird fiction that glitters with startling prose and tortured souls.
• Six of Sorrow, Amanda Linsmeier (Jun 25, Random House Children’s): Sixteen years ago, six girls were born on the same day—and now, on their birthday, one of them is missing. From the author of Starlings comes a story about small-towns, friendships, and the terrifying things your parents don’t tell you, that’s perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.
• Teleportasm, Joshua Millican (Jun 25, Shortwave): Four friends unearth a unique VHS tape that, when viewed, causes short-distance teleportation with euphoric after-effects, inadvertently launching a perilous trend. As copies of the original tape are made, the results become less predictable and ultimately gruesome due to analog generational decay. Despite the danger, some will risk everything for just one more trip.
• The Tyranny of Flies, Elaine Vilar Madruga, trans. Kevin Dunn (Jun 25, HarperVia): In this provocative, darkly funny, and unique novel—a mix of Lord of the Flies and The Royal Tenenbaums—a dictator’s former right-hand man becomes housebound and a family power struggle erupts.
• The Vampire of Vourla and Other Greek Vampire Tales, ​ed. Álvaro García Marín (Jun 25, Valancourt): In this new collection, editor Álvaro García Marín has uncovered the earliest appearances of vampires in English literature, revealing their surprising origin in Greece. This volume includes two seminal classic texts, Lord Byron’s “Fragment of a Novel” and John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, together with five other rare and never-before-reprinted vampire tales from the early 19th century, including the important and inexplicably neglected “The Vampire of Vourla”. Also featured is a scholarly introduction by Prof. Marín, delving into this forgotten field of vampire literary history and situating it within the larger Romantic era and 19th-century English attitudes toward Greece.
• Voracious, Belicia Rhea (Jun 25, Dark Matter INK): A pregnant teenage girl with an eating disorder works to reconcile her visions of a doomsday of insect plagues, and her unique role in what she fears is the impending bug-filled apocalypse.
• We Shall Be Monsters, Tara Sim (Jun 25, Nancy Paulsen Books): Frankenstein meets Indian mythology in this twisty, darkly atmospheric fantasy where the horror is not the monsters you face but the ones you create.
• What Darkness Waits, Chris DiLeo (June, D&T): Daniel Warden’s 64-year old father was dead for ten minutes, but he’s rapidly recovering from his stroke—and he’s getting younger. What at first seems like a miracle becomes a nightmare as Dan’s most outlandish fear—his suddenly young and hale father might seduce his wife—appears to be coming true.

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