Fiction Five: Frighteningly Fantastic

This month is packed to the brim with scary tales that'll leave you squeamishly asking for more. Grab your security blanket, turn the lights way up, and check out one of these new releases.

Nightjars by Michael Wehunt

On a first date, Luke’s date excuses herself to go to the ladies room, but she never comes back. Under her napkin he finds an old photograph. It's a picture of Luke as a child, a dead body in the shadows of his bedroom and a terrifying masked man. He does not remember this event. Luke's deepest fear is that he's like his serial killer father. Is he also a monster?

This gruesome atmospheric horror story has a fast pace that will keep you guessing as you vacillate between sympathizing with Luke and fearing him. The story is told alternately by Luke and his ex-wife Kristen as they strive to protect their daughter from a menacing legacy. 

"Michael Wehunt doesn't just simply tell you a story, he inters you in one. Nightjars is such an immersive nightmare, it feels like being buried alive by a book. You will taste the loam at the back of your throat, the earth clotting up your airways. You're never climbing out from this novel." ― Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

I Am the Monster Under the Bed by Emily Zinnikas

"Fans of the TV series Yellowjackets and the novels of Riley Sager will enjoy this suspenseful horror story." ― Booklist

If you like intricately plotted creepy stories told by an unreliable narrator, you'll want to check out I Am the Monster Under the Bed.

Willa's fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now 32, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a news report exposes her as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings. During her senior year of high school six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free. Is she really the villain her hometown has always believed her to be? 

"With its eerie premise and steadily intensifying dread, I Am the Monster Under the Bed culminates in a truly wild, horror-driven finale. Emily Zinnikas delivers a darkly imaginative debut about trauma, secrets, and the terrifying freedom of unleashing our monsters." –Karma Brown, #1 international bestselling author of Mother Is Watching

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

This debut novel combines historical fiction, political persecution and war with an extremely distributing haunted house to tell a compelling tale of vengeance.

There is something haunting Nuhad’s childhood home in Haifa, Israel. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have vanished without a trace. Nuhad has not been to her home since the Nakba in 1948.

After Nuhad dies, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother’s home after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina's mother knows some secrets are better left buried and Nuhad's ghost tries to warn them away.

As the three women converge in their ancestral home, they must put the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them all.

“Lyrical and haunting, Our Cut of Salt explores the horrors of occupation via the lens of three generations of women as well as a one-of-a-kind haunted house. A disturbing, mesmerizing read.” ― Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep

The Unhaunting by Micaiah Johnson

Known best for her riveting Sci-Fi novels The Space Between Worlds and Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson is creeping into horror and readers are enthralled by her Southern haunted house tale. Johnson's academic life studying race, technology and death are evident in this well-developed historical horror story that is very different from her Sci-Fi work.

Some reviewers warn that getting to know the strong characters may make the early chapters feel slow. However, this character development helps build the tension that makes the rest of the novel completely engrossing.

At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and 170 years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.

There’s an eeriness to the calm, and it’s almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house’s history, Shantell, Avery and Tobias discover there’s only one thing worse than a house that’s haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.

“The Unhaunting is one of the most original, imaginative, and terrifying takes on the haunted house genre I've read in a while. Micaiah Johnson has written a novel of unfathomable crimes, privilege, and the buried traumas of our past—that exposes both the horrors of the supernatural and the ones that lurk in our mundane world.” — P. Djeli Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout

Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror edited by Cynthia Pelayo

“The deliciously horrifying stories that make up Something Followed Us Home offer a cornucopia of Latiné tales that are as creepy as they are disturbing and original. Kudos to editor, Cynthia Pelayo, who has curated this essential anthology by writers who are at the top of their game as they conjure up a diverse cadre of spirits, demons, monsters, and beasts guaranteed to capture your nightmares. You have been warned.” -- Daniel A. Olivas, author of Chicano Frankenstein

"A man’s boyfriend is possessed by a demon, but who is the real monster in this pairing? A young woman faces a painful reminder of the wages of colonial oppression, a legacy teeming with ghosts. A man fleeing from U.S.-sponsored violence finds that he himself is a ghost of sorts, haunting his own threadbare life. From the savagely funny to the eerie and unsettling to the bloody and dark, this collection is the best of what Latiné horror can bring. I will be pressing this book into multiple hands, and I fully expect to see it on a whole lot of year-best lists. ¡Brava!" -- Cynthia Gomez, author of Muñeca

Featuring stories by Agustina Bazterrica, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Cynthia Pelayo, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Mariana Enriquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Ananda Lima, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel Jóse Older, Lilliam Rivera, Alex Segura, Diana Rodriguez Wallach