2023 Horror Books to Keep an Eye on

The Only One Left // Riley Sager

What it is about: Kit is given one last opportunity of employment, a job that will require her to care for Lenora Hope, the longtime suspect in the murder of her whole family. She accepts the job working at Hope’s End, a decaying mansion on a cliff, but soon suspects things are not as they appear.

Release date: June 2023

How to Sell a Haunted House // Grady Hendrix

What it is about: How to Sell a Haunted House is a very strange haunted house story. The synopsis appears to promise something quite traditional. After their parents’ death, Mark and Louise learn their house is haunted as they prepare to sell it. To sell the house, they must get rid of whatever entity haunts it

Release date: January 2023

A House With Good Bones // T. Kingfisher

What it is about: A House with Good Bones follows archaeological entomologist, Sam, as she goes back to her childhood home, originally belonging to her grandmother, to spend time with her ailing mother. As Sam spends more time in her mother’s home, it seems that there is more to her mother’s changed behavior than meets the eye.

Release date: March 2023

Silver Nitrate // Silvia Moreno-Garcia

What it is about: A horror mystery set in the decaying film industry of 1990s Mexico City about friends whose attempt to break a decades-old curse unleashes something even more terrifying.

Release date: July 2023

Vampires of El Norte // Isabel Cañas

What it is about: As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Release Date: August 2023

Rouge // Mona Awad

What it is about: Far beyond the realm of retinol creams and contouring treatments lies Mona Awad’s novel “Rouge,” a gothic comedy about a skin care vlog-obsessed young woman named Mirabelle (a.k.a. Belle), a Montreal shopgirl who, following the death of her glamorous mother, returns to the Southern California of her adolescence to settle her affairs.

Release Date: September 2023

Natural Beauty // Ling Ling Huang

What it is about: Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. 

Release Date: April 2023

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight // Kalynn Barron

What it is about: Charity has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake

Release Date: June 2023

The Lake House // Sarah Beth Durst

What it is about: Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired—her worst-case scenarios never actually come true. Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge—and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana.

Release Date: April 2023

The Centre // Ayesha Manager Siddiqi

What it is about: Adam tells Anisa about the Centre, an elite, invite-only programme that guarantees total fluency in any language in just ten days. Sceptical but intrigued, Anisa enrols. Stripped of her belongings and contact with the outside world, she undergoes the Centre’s strange and rigorous processes.

Release Date: July 2023

Camp Damascus // Chuck Tingle

What it is about: Camp Damascus follows a 20-year-old autistic girl named Rose as she begins to unravel her known reality, living within the confines of a small town whose population largely attends church who hosts what’s known as the nation’s most effective conversion camp, boasting a 100% success rate.

Release Date: July 2023

Bridge // Lauren Beukes

What it is about: A grieving daughter’s search for her mother becomes a journey across alternate realities in Bridge, a wildly entertaining, reality-bending new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of the AppleTV+ smash hit The Shining Girls. It was a game they played; the other worlds, the other lives.

Release Date: August 2023

The September House // Carissa Orlando

What it is about: A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

Release Date: September 2023

There’s no Way I’d Die First // Lisa Springer

What it is about: A spine-tingling contemporary horror-comedy novel that follows a scary-movie buff as she hosts an elaborate Halloween bash but soon finds the festivities upended when she and her guests are forced to test their survival skills in a deadly game, from debut author Lisa Springer.

Release Date: September 2023

Kill For Love // Laura Picklesimer

What it is about: Kill for Love is a searing satirical thriller about Tiffany, a privileged Los Angeles sorority sister who is struggling to keep her sadistic impulses—and haunting nightmares of fire and destruction—at bay.

Release Date: September 2023

Black Sheep // Rachel Harrison

What it is about: Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly…something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.

Release Date: September 2023

And Then She Fell // Alicia Elliot

What it is about: A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences

Release Date: September 2023

A Haunting on the Hill // Elizabeth Hand

What it is about: Holly is a playwright, and her latest work is The Witch of Edmonton. She thinks this is the play that will launch her career. While on a weekend trip, she discovers an old gothic mansion named Hill House. The house becomes her muse in a way, and she thinks it will make the perfect place for rehearsals.

Release Date: October 2023

The Night House // Jo Nesbo

What it is about: In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible.

Release Date: May 2023

Bluebeard’s Castle // Anna Biller

What it is about: When the successful British mystery writer Judith Moore meets Gavin, a handsome and charming baron, at a birthday party on the Cornish coast, his love transforms her from a bitter, lonely young woman into a romance heroine overnight. After a whirlwind honeymoon in Paris, he whisks her away to a secluded Gothic castle.

Release Date: October 2023