The List of Unspeakable Fears by J. Kasper Kramer: It’s 1910 and Essie O’Neill’s widowed mom has married a doctor who runs a quarantine hospital on North Brother Island, the same hospital in which the infamous Typhoid Mary is under lock and key. The unsettling island haunted by a tragedy that occurred just off its shores, its hospital filled with the sick and dying, and the creepy old house in which she must live now combine with Essie’s wild imagination to create some truly freaky moments. And as afraid as Essie is of the things on her List of Unspeakable Fears, as scary as it makes the book itself, it becomes something much more powerful. I was also a child with a lot of anxiety (that child is still in me), and this book has provided me with some shelter from my own fears about the seemingly endless COVID-19 crisis. Maybe this book is a roadmap for not letting fear get the best of us: name your fears first, accept them, and then you will be brave. -Karen

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson: This is everything one could hope for in a horror novel: creepy house with a mysterious history, a main character unsure of her own reality even without a malevolent spirit that might want her dead, and of course a healthy dose of suspense. Mari and her newly blended family have just relocated to Cederville, a small midwestern town where her mom has accepted an artist-in-residence grant. Running from the ghosts of her former life in California, Mari is trying desperately to keep her head down and not get into trouble. A bit difficult when there is clearly something or someone in your house that doesn’t want you there. With her usual flourish, Jackson thrills the reader, but not without diving into deeper themes of the prison industrial complex and gentrification. Steeped in the undertones of the best urban legends born of racial trauma, Jackson creates a haunted house story that consumes the reader until the final page. -Elisa

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (out Oct. 19): This book takes traditional horror tropes and steeps them in Japanese folklore in a way that’s genuinely nasty and twisted with a specter that might actually give you nightmares. The visceral descriptions compliment a storyline in which we feel build-up of a very bad thing coming, even as it’s intertwined with the relationships, fall-outs, jealousies, and bitterness between the twenty-somethings all gathered together for a wedding in the Heian-era house said to have been built over the bones of a spurned bride and over a thousand years’ worth of remains of girls who were sacrificed to keep her company. As the tension and fighting mounts between the wedding party, so too does the feeling that the dead bride’s ghost will be the ultimate winner in the end. And as bad as that might sound, it’s wickedly delicious fun. This book will sink its rotting teeth into you, and it will not let go easily. -Karen