Okay folx, it is officially the spooky part of spooky season, and the queer horror shelf is stacked this year. Whether you want a vampire, a haunted campus, or something that gets under your skin, we pulled six recent releases to keep your lights on at 2 a.m.
Horror is horror, so please check content warnings before you dive in. We’ve linked the author’s CW page where one exists.
Needlemouth by K-Ming Chang (out October 20) Girl cousins, a take on vampirism, and the gloriously grotesque streak that K-Ming Chang readers already love. One Autostraddle editor named it the standout queer horror release of the month.
Rottenheart by Kat Dunn (out October 13) Gothic horror from the author of Hungerstone. This time Hamlet gets reworked into a story of a mother’s revenge and haunting, with a queer love story threaded through.
Your Beloved Remains by Quinn Connor (out October 6) Dark academia, sapphic romance, and horror all at once. Celia is an archivist at a struggling women’s college in the Ozarks, and she forges a lost manuscript by a long-dead writer to try to save the school. To pull it off, she has to team up with her rival, Joan.
Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe (out October 20) Marcella is a monster trying to keep her meals discreet. Lacie is a professor just trying to make tenure. When people start dying, Lacie isn’t sure she believes Marcella’s claims of innocence, and she isn’t sure she can resist her either.
Carrying by Samantha Josephs (out October 6) Literary horror about Martha, a trans woman so stealth that even her loving family thinks she’s cis. When a chronic illness threatens to unravel everything, experimental treatment brings strange cravings and a pregnancy. It has already been shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s debut novel prize.
Until the Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould (YA, out November 10th I know it is late but Courtney is always worth the wait!) Twenty-five years after a senior class entered a Florida Keys resort and most never came out, the children of the five survivors get pulled back. Paige’s ex-best friend KJ is obsessed with the mystery, and then she goes missing.
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