Three years ago, a night in a haunted house fractured the friendship of three young women forever. One of them never left the House. The remaining two, Alice and Ila, were formerly lovers. Now, they can’t stand each other. But when Alice and Ila realize that they each have radically different memories of what happened inside the House, they reunite with a mission: to find out what really happened and rescue their friend before it’s too late.

A father desperate for money moves his two daughters into a deeply haunted house in this debut novel. As the new caretaker of the Masson House, Eric is tasked with determining whether or not the property — adjacent to an abandoned orphanage — is truly haunted. He’s not the first to attempt to unravel the house’s secrets…but will he be the last?

2023 is shaping up to be the year of haunted house novels, in case you hadn’t noticed. In She Is a Haunting, a Vietnamese American teenager plans a five-week stay in Vietnam, where her estranged father is renovating an old house built by the country’s French occupiers. She’s only there to get her college tuition money and go back to the States, but when terrifying symptoms begin to manifest during her stay — phenomena her father and sister deny — she realizes she may be her family’s only hope in getting out alive.

Elle knows her younger brother will kill her if he finds her. That’s why she’s working an entry-level job with a temp agency; she can’t risk putting all of her magical powers on display for him to find. It’s not all bad — she gets to help a cute half-elf named Luc carry out some truly dangerous operations. When Luc’s next target turns out to be Elle’s younger brother, Elle sees a chance at the kind of happiness she can only dream of. But can she really choose Luc over the rest of her family?

Ai Jiang’s Linghun isn’t your average ghost story. Here, grieving families camp out in a strange town for a chance at reuniting with their dead loved ones. Dead spirits can be brought back to occupy the houses of HOME, but their presence comes at a steep price: the peace of moving on from grief. This horror novella is a masterful treatise on mourning, family, and the ongoing relationships that bind the living and the dead.

Anequs is the first dragon rider on the island of Masquapaug in decades. The Anglish colonizers who now control her people’s land refuse to let her raise the dragon hatchling she has found unless she agrees to undergo training at an Anglish school on the mainland. Anequs’s dragon companion’s life depends on her successful completion of an Anglish education, but she’s determined not to let the school destroy her connection to her heritage.

Maeve’s connections to Old Hollywood haven’t granted her stardom. Instead, she’s stuck playing a princess at the most magical place on earth by day and haunting seedy bars by night. To put it simply, her life isn’t what it was supposed to be — and it’s only getting worse. As Maeve’s circumstances go down the tubes, her contempt for humanity rises. She’s about to become the kind of monster she’s only read about…and she’s in for a wild ride.

Humanity relies on the architects to survive. People with the ability to psychically shape the plants of the jungle below, architects keep plant-built cities afloat in the sky. Ahilya is not an architect, but her husband Iravan is. He’s revered for his work protecting the city of Nakshar, and his position provides Ahilya with some much-needed cover. Iravan’s wife is secretly a radical who thinks humanity should return to the jungle below, and she’s about to get her chance to make her unpopular philosophy a reality.

A cottagecore retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth? Yes, please! Neither Lila nor Damien is the child their parents wanted. She’s too temperamental for her disapproving parents; he’s already made it clear that he’ll put his own feelings ahead of his duty. Damien knows that Lila is the next girl who must be sacrificed to keep Luna Island safe, but could she be the one to stop the grisly tradition in which he’s forced to take part?

The generation ship Phoenix is halfway between the dying Earth and humanity’s new home when a massive explosion jeopardizes the fate of the mission. Now, three of the crew are dead, and Asuka — an American crewmember chosen for the mission because of her Japanese ancestry — is the primary suspect. She needs to clear her name by finding the real bomber, but her crewmates aren’t exactly inclined to help.

Steeped in Venezuelan folklore, The Sun and the Void centers on Reina, a servant indebted to the sorceress of Aguila Manor — a woman she barely knows, who happens to be her own grandmother. She begins working as a servant in the grand old house, where she finds herself falling for the Don’s daughter, Celeste. Reina is determined to stay close to these two women — the one who saved her life and the one she’s growing to love — but her dealings with an ancient god may get in the way.

Tiffany D. Jackson wrote my favorite horror novel of last year, White Smoke, and she’s back again with another banger. See if this synopsis reminds you of any other classic horror stories you might know. Madison Washington is a student at a small high school in Georgia called Springville High. Madison has always been the target of bullying, but things get much worse after her big secret is revealed: she’s biracial and has been passing as white, at the behest of her white father Thomas Washington. When a video that reveals the high school’s racism goes viral, Springville students know they have to rehabilitate their image. And so they decide to the school’s first integrated prom. But they still have a few surprises for Maddy. And when Maddy reveals another one of her well-kept secrets, she’ll have a big surprise for them as well.

Here’s a horror novel that kept me on the edge of my seat, kept me scared, and kept me guessing the whole time. Vera hasn’t been back to her childhood home in years, but when Vera’s mother tells her to come home, she obeys. She’s been avoiding the horrible things that happened there — her strained relationship with her mother, the haunting memory of her serial killer father, and then there are all the bodies that he buried there. But now she will be forced to confront them. And while Vera thought most of these things were in the past, very real ghosts of her childhood still remain. And they’re still very much haunting her.

I love reality dating shows and comedic horror, so this one really spoke to me. When the finalists for the dating reality TV show The Catch go to Otters Island to film the last episodes of the season, they’re expecting to compete with one another for the lead’s attentions (and of course the social media clout that comes with that). What they’re not expecting? Patricia, a woefully misunderstood creature who hides in the dark and is looking for a connection of her own.

Here’s another excellent new book from one of my favorite horror authors. This book follows Erin, who has been in a toxic on-again, off-again relationship with Silas. But after he pushes things too far, Erin decides to end things with Silas once and for all. After Silas dies of an overdose, Erin finds out that Silas had discovered a drug that would allow him to see the dead. Erin doesn’t believe in ghosts, but her grief and guilt for abandoning Silas leads her to a pill-popping “séance.” But once Erin attempts to step into the real world, her visions of the dead refuse to let her go.

Definitely grab a hard copy of this book to keep, because the visuals of all of the annotations are half of the fun. Art Barbara was a high school loner in the 1980s who started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. Never would he have imagined the coolest girl in school would join. Sure, there were some odd things about her, and some terrifying things that only seemed to happen when she was around — usually at night. But she was cool and she was his friend, so Art tried not to worry about it too much. That is, until decades later, when Art decides to write The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. When this friend somehow gets her hands on the manuscript, she’s not too happy with what Art has written.

Catriona Ward’s Sundial is proof that this author belongs on my must-read list. Rob is trying desperately to escape the strangeness of her childhood, living in Sundial, deep in the Mojave desert. She’s now far away from that place, and she lives in the suburbs with her husband and her two kids. But still her past refuses to let go. She can see it reflected in her oldest daughter Callie, who spends her days collecting bones and whispering to imaginary friends. It all feels too familiar, too much like the life she’s desperately trying to leave behind. But the things that happened at Sundial can’t remain a secret forever.

This one was recently released and immediately climbed to the top of my list of favorite books from 2022. Thirty-five-year-old Kari James is an Indigenous woman living in Denver who has spent most of her life willfully ignorant of her past. But then Kari’s cousin Debby finds an old family bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother. The bracelet calls up the ghost of Kari’s dead mother, but that’s just the beginning. Something else more sinister and monstrous is awakened as well. Now Kari must confront her past to discover what happened to her mother all those years ago.

Alexis Henderson’s House of Hunger is atmospheric historical horror fantasy at its best. Marion Shaw was raised in poverty. Now she longs to escape the difficulties of city life, but she sees no way out. Could a newspaper ad searching for a bloodmaid be her way out? Marion knows very little about the position or the far north where she will have to travel, but she applies anyway. As the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger, Marion meets Countess Lisavet who presides over a court of hedonism. Marion is eager to please her mistress, who is both charismatic and terrifying. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing, Marion realizes she must learn the rules of House of Hunger or her own life will soon be at risk.

Apparently red dresses are having a moment on horror book covers this year. The Hacienda is a gothic horror/suspense novel is set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence. Beatriz is set to marry the handsome and wealthy Don Rodolfo Solórzano. But her new home in Hacienda San Isidro is not entirely a dream come true. When Beatriz is left alone in the house while her new husband tends to work at the capital, she starts seeing visions and hearing voices in her head.

Eric La Rocca’s novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was first released in 2021, but the novella was rereleased this year with a stunning new cover and a couple of short stories as well. So with that in mind, it seemed necessary to include this unforgettable story on the list for 2022. The novella follows the story of two women who meet each other in a chatroom in the early 2000s. As their relationship gets more intense, both women discover just how far they’ll go (and it’s…terrifying).

Twins Holland and Niles grew up on a remote farm with a strange sort of telepathy between them. Holland was always the troublemaker, Niles the one cleaning up the damage left in his wake. After the loss of their father in an accident pushes their mother to the brink mentally, they are largely left to care for themselves. As Holland’s aggressive behavior gets more and more worrying and tragedy seems to follow the twins, Holland and Niles’s relationship is pushed to the edge.

Seven-year-old Marina loses her parents in a car accident that also leaves her injured and needing therapy. Afterwards, she’s sent to an orphanage, now alone in the world. Despite them all being orphans, the kids around her bully and steal from her, ruining the doll she was given by the psychologist at the hospital. To win them over, she asks them to play a game at night where they pretend to be dolls, but the game isn’t quite so innocent after all.

Hanna is 7 and adores her father. Too bad her mom, Suzette, is in the picture too, always taking her away from him. As a result, Hanna develops the habit of scaring her mother, tricking her, willfully going against everything she wants her to do. Despite her husband’s oblivion to Hanna’s escalating behavior, Suzette is at her wit’s end with Hannah’s every attempt to get rid of her for good.

Amanda is dying in a hospital room in Argentina, a young boy named David beside her. But he isn’t her son and his interrogation of her and her past isn’t friendly or even comprehensible at times. He wants to know about the worms in the body. In the process of their conversation, Amanda reveals her past with her own daughter. Strangely, her past intersects with David’s more closely than she realized.

Ghostwritten is a compilation of four novellas all on the theme of books. In This Book Belongs to Olo, a homeschooled son of authors creates his own pop-up book of his house. But it’s not just a normal book; it shifts the layout of his home, making hidden hallways appear. Desperate for companionship, Olo invites a group of kids over for his birthday to try to make them his best friends forever.

Jessamy is half Nigerian and half English. At eight, she’s imaginative and intelligent to a fault, her ability to fit in at school impacted by her tendency to wander off inside her mind. While on a visit to Nigeria, Jessamy meets TillyTilly, a young girl who pushes her to break rules and do things she shouldn’t do. As TillyTilly’s actions get more and more scary, Jessamy wonders if she’s really her friend after all.

Murdered hundreds of years ago, Okiku haunts the Earth seeking revenge on people who hurt children, especially men. When she meets a boy, Tarquin, his strange tattoos and the evil she can see inside of him catch her attention. But her every attempt at saving him fails and she must turn to extreme measures in the hopes of keeping him safe and alive.

After a disease kills all of the children around the world who haven’t yet hit puberty, the remaining people on Earth are left grieving and with no answers as to why. But then three days later, the children, buried, rise from the dead. But they’re not quite right with their gray skin and lack of heartbeats with only a craving for blood. The novel focuses on three families dealing with their children who’ve come back from the dead with bloody, bloody appetites.

When 15-year-old Forest witnesses her stepfather, Pastor Nesmith, doing something evil in the barn, she goes on the run from him and his followers to her grandmother’s house. On the way, she bumps into a lost man in the woods, Elijah, who’s also fleeing from something terrifying. Forest must dodge the pursuit of Nesmith and his henchmen who are desperate for talk of what they’re actually doing to stay inside the confines of their community.

Poetry and horror come together in this new collection by Christina Sng. Full of short form poems like haiku and tanka, the collection touches on all of the monsters we know and love: ghosts, sirens, and other classic fairytales and myths. With sections of horror and dark science fiction, you’re sure to find a bite-sized scare in this new poetry collection.

This new collection by V. Castro is full of stories of revenge from Aztlan, a mythical homeland of the Aztecs. In the pages you’ll find a goddess emerging from a lake to clean up the Earth, jellyfish mutating to take out beach visitors, and the pirate The Scorpion and her crew going head-to-head with corrupt royalty with the assistance of mermaids — and it’s all in the name of vengeance.

Horror anthology icon Ellen Datlow is back again with the 14th volume of The Best Horror of the Year. Full of authors we know and love like Stephen Graham Jones, Mira Grant, Neil Gaiman, and many more, you’re sure to find something wonderfully terrifying inside.

We’re back in the war between humans and Arcanics in this 500-page collection of Monstress volumes 4–6. Maika Halfwolf is in search of her past and must reckon with the monster inside. But answers and trust are hard to come by in the Known World on the brink of yet another war.

When Grayson Hale arrives at the University of Edinburgh, determined to make a name for himself and desperate for the money to make it happen, he takes a ghostwriting job from an unnerving stranger. The book he’s asked to write, though, brings up the feeling that the Devil is after him. When he confesses to murdering his classmate, he claims the Devil made him do it. After he’s found hanged in his prison cell, law enforcement find a manuscript that may just hold the answers to his real motives.

After college student Jordan’s grandmother is killed in a televised massacre, he’s left angry and grieving. When he discovers his grandparents’ TV has time travel powers, he leaps at the chance to save his beloved grandmother from her fate and also stop the perpetrator from ever enacting violence again. As it turns out, though, going back in time is easy, but returning might not be.

Violations of body autonomy are at the forefront of Mine: An Anthology of Body Autonomy Horror edited by Roxie Voorhees and Nico Bell. The collection’s 16 stories explore what makes our bodies ours and the limits of control we have over these things we walk around in all day.

Vanessa Castro’s first day on the job as Deputy Police Chief in Seaside, Washington, brings her to Wonderland, an amusement park with a Clown Museum and House of Horrors inside and a shady history. A dead body turns up inside the park’s gates and an employee goes missing, setting Vanessa down a path into the past.

Gerald works from home, using Slack to communicate with his coworkers. Well, sort of. He’s more…part of Slack, leaving his body behind somewhere. Not that his bosses mind much with his productivity off the charts. But life inside Slack isn’t exactly enjoyable and Gerald wants to get out and get his body back. But, how? Told through Slack messages and emojis, this one taps into the horrors of Slack and working from home.

After a failed merger, video game company CompWare needs help to keep their reputation up in the public eye. It makes sense, then, to hire a consultant to help them figure out best practices. The consultant who arrives, Mr. Regus Patoff, is a little strange, asking odd questions, and making unexpected visits to employees’ homes. Disobedience is punished and not conforming to the new way of things is deadly.

When Lena gets a letter in the mail about a high-paying job, she jumps at the chance. Her grandmother recently passed away and the responsibility for caring for her ailing mother now falls on her shoulders. And, how bad could a research study be? But there’s a reason the study has to be kept secret and the more the facility pushes her boundaries, the more Lena has to give up to keep her family afloat.

Woody runs a bookshop in a strip mall, striving to make it the best it can be before the upcoming inspection. But each time the staff arrives to open the store, the organized shelves are in disarray. Add to that malfunctioning computers and a hit-and-run in the parking lot, and Woody’s high hopes for the store fray at the edges. He decides to do an overnight inventory, gathering everyone together to get the place in ship shape. But they find something far more sinister than damaged books.

The mall in Eden Hills is its crowning achievement in all of its 80’s-inspired glory. When Penny gets a job in a clothing store there, she’s stoked to work with her best friend and her crush. So what if they’re cryptic about the weird symbols they all wear? When Penny stays late for a party, a killer in a mask makes an appearance. Locked in the mall with no cell service, the teenagers have to get free before the killer comes for them too.

After a virus takes out most of the animals, society has to turn to eating human meat, dubbed “special meat” to survive. Marcos works at one of the slaughterhouses, isolated from physical touch. But when he starts to treat one of the “specimens” with compassion, the weight of what he does and what he’s lost is crushing.

Susan has finally found the perfect spot to open her own dental practice. There are even tools left behind by the previous tenants for her to use. But when one of the tools is embedded with something evil, she’s compelled by it to bring victims to the practice for their blood. Teaming up with the local coven, Susan is determined to stop the evil before it takes over her dental office for good.

After an attack by the Jigsaw Killer, Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley is back on the job. With the killer in prison, all she has to do is look ahead. But when she and trainee Salim Ramouter report to a murder scene with eerie similarities to The Jigsaw Killer, looking forward isn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Who is the copycat and why do they seem to be focused on Henley herself?

For middle grade readers, Skeleton Man is great. When young Molly finds her parents missing one morning, she’s left in the care of her great-uncle. His weird behavior, the lock on her door, and dreams plagued with the Skeleton Man, though, only add more confusion and grief to her life. Molly has to find her parents and get out fast before she finds out what happens when the door isn’t locked at night.

When six young men are desperate to get the money, power, and lives of their dreams, they turn to drastic measures. Summoning a demon, they use him to get all they want. But it turns out their control over the demon was weaker than they thought and they have to fight to reverse their actions before it’s too late.

Twenty years ago, in the town of Featherbank, a man would whisper into windows at night to lure his victims outside. The Whisper Man killed five before getting caught. After a tragedy in the family, Tom and his son Jake move to town for a fresh start. But the decades past killer might not be put to rest when a boy disappears soon after they move in. And then Jake starts to act weirdly, too.

Empty Man disease is rampant one year after it appeared with symptoms of rage, hallucinations, death, and a catatonic state. At every site is the words “The Empty Man Made Me Do It.” The FBI and the CDC team up to try to find a cure to the disease inside cults that rise up around the weird plague. Will they get to the bottom of things before it’s too late for the world and for themselves?

When she was a girl, Eve Black was the only one in her family who survived an attack by a serial killer. Now, as an adult, she publishes a novel about what happened and who the attacker, The Nothing Man, might be. Security guard Jim Doyle picks it up and is shocked to find just how close she is to discovering his true identity. Now, he’s determined to take care of Eve, his only loose end, before she finds out the truth.

As a kid, Eddie and his group of friends develop a code in little chalk men. On the day they get to go to the fair without adult supervision, a tragedy on a ride leaves carnage in its wake. Then, using their coded messages that none of them claim to have written, they’re led to a dead body. Now in his 40s, Eddie gets a letter from an unknown sender and it brings that day back. It’s clear, now, the past won’t leave him alone and he needs to uncover the truth to live his life.

Everyone in Slayton knows the silly story of the Midnight Man. But when five girls go to Blackhall Manor on Halloween to play the Midnight Game and summon the urban legend, only four of them make it home. Detective Sarah Noble is on the case, digging into her own experiences at Blackhall Manor 20 years ago, to stop the Midnight Man before he comes for anyone else.

These are three things that are upsetting: 1. Being dead. 2. Finding a body. 3. Not remembering anything. Now imagine they’re all occurring at once. That’s what happens to Magpie. She finds a dead body by the river, and it’s her. How is that possible? She doesn’t know, because she can’t remember what has happened or how she got there. She also doesn’t realize she’s being monitored as part of an experiment.

This is one of the best sci-fi space horror books to come along recently. It’s a little like Event Horizon meets Avenue Five. The crew of Claire Kovalik’s salvage ship are about to complete their last mission when they hit paydirt: they find the Aurora. The Aurora was a luxury space cruise liner that went missing two decades ago. Now it’s floating on the outer rim of explored space. Claire decides to check the ship out, because the money they can get from a famous ship could solve their problems. But even though the ship has been missing for 20 years, the horrors that occurred on board are still present.

So this is one of those books that the less you know, the better. It’s Gothic horror, but it’s also labeled as science fiction. What? Yep. But to explain why that is would spoil the story. So let’s just say it’s a horror novel set in a desolate chateau, involving doctors, a medical institute, and a very unusual narrator. Oh, and it’s weird and gross AF, and you should read it right now.

Koepp’s last book, Cold Storage, was a horror novel about a biohazard with a body count, featuring a lethal alien species that escapes a military facility. This time, he’s using reality to frighten us. A giant solar flare could destroy our access to technology and electricity on the plane, and that’s just what happens in Aurora. In the world that follows such an incident, Aubrey Wheeler must guard her neighborhood against the very real violence that will follow in the new dystopian reality. All while trying to keep her ex-husband and criminals from her home.

Like many of the best science fiction novels, this one starts out with space exploration. The Deucalion has set out from Earth to investigate a possible habitable planet. Dr. Grace Park is the alternate psychologist aboard the ship. She’s mostly there to observe, since there’s already a doctor dealing with the crew. But then things start to go very, very wrong. Grace is left to try and manage the sessions of an increasingly erratic crew. Meanwhile the ships AI are also getting weirder, and Grace discovers there might be something hidden in the bowels of the ship that is causing all the problems.

This is one of two sequels I want to highlight on this list, because the whole series is so freaking good. So as not to spoil the first two books, I will give you a brief overview of the Beneath the Rising series. While trying to invent technology that will help the planet, humans instead create a device that awakens the Ancient Ones, who are not happy about being disturbed. At all. Now the human race must figure out a way to survive a whole new thing they didn’t know existed. It all concludes spectacularly in The Void Ascendant!

First, I want to say how much I love this title. There’s the expression “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” And the Ministry album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste. (Omg I am so old.) But this nails it: minds are terrible. Good grief, are brains trouble sometimes. And in this spacecraft horror novel, they’re going to cause people a lot of problems, when aliens figure out how to hack them like computers and turn people into their puppets.

More space horrors! It’s the future, and a demon is terrorizing a distant planet. The fourth daughter of the planet’s queen wants to try and save the planet’s people, since the rest of her family doesn’t seem to want to do it. She may not be able to do it alone, so she turns to the anthropologist from an Earth mission, who has been in a deep sleep for the last several years, waiting for new instructions. But demons were definitely not in the job description. It’s a little ancient horrors, a little fairy tale, and a whole lot of fun.

This is the other series I wanted to mention because it’s so scary and gory, and such a great time. The Molly Southbourne series starts off with a young girl who has big problems. If Molly ever sheds a drop of blood, that blood turns into a new version of her — and it tries to murder her. As you can imagine, it’s hard to go through life without ever getting a scratch or a bloody nose, and Molly has to kill a LOT of versions of herself. But why is she like this? Where did she come from? And what’s going to happen when she gets the answers? Find out in this amazing conclusion, after you read the first two of course! And for a great space murder mystery, check out Thompson’s most recent book, Far from the Light of Heaven.

And last but not least, a thrilling story about murder on a space station! Space suddenly feels a whole lot smaller when you’re sharing it with a killer. Hester Marley has a boring job as a security guard for a space mining company. Injuries sustained in a terrorist attack years earlier destroyed her grand dreams of space travel. Then she hears from an old friend who has new information about the attack. But before they can share it, he is murdered. Now Hester must figure out what he uncovered and who she can trust.

Sandra Molina is a producer at a TV station when she sends her crew into a spiraling investigation of an urban legend called The Root Witch, with ties to a forest in Utah. When the crew starts to see shadows and then go missing one by one, her decision-making is called into question. Through video footage and journal entries, the story of The Root Witch and what really happened in the trees is revealed. This novelette is a quick, scary read for those who love to think about what lurks in the heart of the forest.

Less killer-plants and more horror focused on the eating of plants; The Vegetarian follows a young woman as she starts to have nightmares about meat. As a result, she decides to become a vegetarian despite her husband and family’s protests. She starts to live more “plant-like,” spending more time in the sun, in the forest, and in the rain. Her spiral into this life and the reactions of those around her bring her further and further from the woman she was.

In a world where aliens have come to Earth and take residence in Nigeria where the technologically and economically prosper, the U.S. bans travel from Africa. When a pregnant Nigerian American doctor smuggles an alien plant through LaGuardia airport, she joins a community of other Nigerians and other shapeshifting aliens. Dealing with discrimination and travel bans, the birth of her child threatens to uproot everything.

On vacation in sunny Mexico, two couples enjoy their time in the sun. When they meet a German tourist who says his brother disappeared in search of Mayan ruins, they decide to set out on a journey to find him. But something lurks in the jungle they trek through, stranding them on a hilltop with limited resources and no way out.

After the death of her girlfriend, Sarah, a writer suffering from writer’s block moves to a rural old house. While exploring her new residence, she finds the manuscript of the house’s previous occupant all about a local folklore about the oak tree in her yard. The tree takes root, urging her to write about it and infiltrating her dreams. Her grip of reality retreats as the tree fills her every thought.

This short story collection is full of Tremblay’s signature scares. The titular short story, “Growing Things” is about two sisters living in a world of destruction. A plant is taking over the world, destroying cities and leaving ruins in its wake. Other stories in the collection play off the choose-your-own-adventure genre, depict disappearing getaway drivers, and have the sadness-tinged horror Tremblay is so good at.

After the women in society contract a strange illness and die, mushrooms sprout on their graves. The mushrooms develop into sentient beings who shake up the community’s gender roles and identity. Told by the resident storyteller Nate, the overtaking of the society is creeping and a beautiful tale.

This whole collection is full of killer plants of all kinds. Haunted forests, jungles full of man-eating plants, and botanists obsessed with researching flesh-eating flowers fill the pages of this short story collection. If you’re in the mood for a variety of quick, scary growing things, this is a great option.