One thing about working for a book-centered company is that your to-be-read pile will reach an astronomical height. It was, unsurprisingly, already pretty hefty, but day after day of reading about the latest and greatest releases from my colleagues has me stacking and stacking. In other words, I have been influenced!
Specifically, I have been influenced to pick up a few BIPOC horror books, and aim to finish them off while we are still within spooky season. There are only a couple weeks left, but I can tell that these stories about the legend of the headless woman, gothic revenge on a Scottish isle, and carnivorous plants will have me turning pages with the quickness.
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In Reading Color
A weekly newsletter focusing on literature by and about people of color!
The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan
Mexican American and Indigenous novelist and poet Jennifer Givhan has been killing it in the horror game (Salt Bones, River Women, River Demon), and I’m thrilled to see her latest comped to greats like Stephen Graham Jones, Gabino Iglesias, and Carmen Maria Machado. Inspired by true events, it’s the story of Fortuna, a mother who moves her family to a better neighborhood across the Rio Grande in hopes of outrunning a violent family curse, and Jeanette, a detective who’s spent decades chasing the ghosts of her murdered cousins. Fortuna and Jeanette’s paths collide when a body is found in this Chicanified remix of the legend of the headless woman. —Vanessa Diaz
Insatiable by Erica Ridley
In this Gothic horror, Catriona Cameron is one of only six girls to be accepted at the coed Isle of Skye boarding school in Scotland. And after curses are placed on her in an attack by some of the male students, Catriona receives new looks, new powers, new cravings, and a strong desire to punish people who hurt women. And there are a lot of people who need to be punished… —Liberty Hardy
Off the Reservation by Stephen Graham Jones
Five years after the massacres in The Only Good Indians, one of the survivors of the revenge murders, Nathan Yellow Tail, is in the hospital. He’s survived an accident that should’ve killed him and his pal Sebby, who is also in the hospital, having barely survived.
Nate realizes he can turn his life around. He’s got a camper van and three older Blackfeet. They’re going to find the bones of the only Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Once they do that, they’ll repatriate the boy home.
Too bad that the bones have allowed something else to escape in the process.
Readers looking for Indigenous horror already know and love Stephen Graham Jones, and this next entry in his catalog of moving and terrifying reads promises to deliver. —Kelly Jensen
What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
From the author of The Mean Ones and Such Lovely Skin comes this delightfully creepy biological survival horror story. Seventeen-year-old Petra is an underground guide who is forced to go on a rescue mission to rescue her best friend Jade from The Void, a chasm that is overrun with monsters and carnivorous plants. As a guide, Petra has delved into The Void before, but she has never dared to go beyond the upper levels. Now she must go far beyond where she feels safe, and she has no idea what she will find there. —Emily Martin
For more new horror, check out this round-up of this month’s releases.
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