Books I’m Excited for in 2025

Happy New Year (almost)! As I get ready to write my New Year’s Resolutions for 2025, I always like to look ahead to the books that will be coming out over the next year. Here are just a few of the ones that I’m excited for: 

1) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (set to be released February 4)

Victorian Psycho coverA Victorian, gender-swapped American Psycho? The pitch for this one certainly has me intrigued. The book follows Winifred Notty as she plays the role of the perfect governess at Ensor House while occasionally giving in to her darkest impulses.

2) Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread by Leila Taylor (set to be released February 11)

Sick Houses coverIt’s rare that I include a nonfiction book on this list, but I loved Leila Taylor’s Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul back in 2019 and just learned that she’s coming out with a second book. Sick Houses explores the role that houses and domestic spaces play in the horror genre, from Otranto to Amityville. I always enjoy Taylor’s analyses of horror and the Gothic and can’t wait to see what new insights she provides here.

3) The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (set to be released March 4)

The River Has Roots coverI haven’t read any of Amal El-Mohtar’s solo works before, only the brilliant This Is How You Lose the Time War, cowritten with Max Gladstone, but this dark fantasy inspired by fairy lore and folk ballads sounds right up my alley.

4) The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (set to be released March 18)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter coverI’ve been a big fan of Stephen Graham Jones’s works, from The Only Good Indians to My Heart Is a Chainsaw and I Was a Teenage Slasher, so of course I have to check out his next piece of gut-wrenching horror. I’m particularly excited to see that The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a historical novel that makes use of the found document trope. Presented as the diary of a Lutheran pastor and transcripts of interviews with the locals, the story takes place on a Blackfeet reservation in the year 1912. And it involves a vampire. What more could you need?

5) Overgrowth by Mira Grant (set to be released May 6)

Overgrowth coverMira Grant (Seanan McGuire’s more horror-heavy pseudonym) has been one of my favorite horror writers since I first discovered her short fiction in Ellen Datlow’s various anthologies, but the last full-length novel written under this pseudonym that I read was her mermaid slasher Into the Drowning Deep—far and away my favorite book of 2018. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that we’re getting some new Mira Grant this year. Not just that, but it’s a tale of pernicious plants and alien invasions. I can’t wait to see how Mira Grant tackles these well-worn subgenres.

6) The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (set to be released July 15)

The Bewitching coverSince first reading Mexican Gothic in 2020, I’ve been gobbling up all of the Silvia Moreno-Garcia books I can get my hands on. This new one is a generation-spanning dark academia tale of women and witchcraft that centers on a graduate student named Minerva as she researches a mysterious horror author and the strange happenings that occurred at her school decades earlier.

7) America’s Most Gothic by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes (set to be released July 29)

America's Most Gothic coverA second nonfiction book on the list! You know no yearly TBR is complete without a Leanna Renee Hieber book on the pile. This new one is a followup of sorts to this year’s A Haunted History of Invisible Women, both cowritten with Andrea Janes, founder of NYC’s spooky walking tour company Boroughs of the Dead. While Haunted History focused specifically on female-centered hauntings, America’s Most Gothic takes a broader look at real-life hauntings and how they relate to the tropes of Gothic literature. Absolutely the kind of book that this blog was made to review. 

8) The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas (set to be released August 19)

The Possession of Alba DiazOne of my favorite books I read this year was Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas, so I’m excited to see what’s next from her. Set in 1765, The Possession of Alba Díaz explores the history of Mexico’s silver mines, but things take a demonic turn when Alba flees her plague-ravaged village only to become infected with something even worse…. It’s also a love story and, as I discovered this year, I really do love the horromance combo!

9) Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (set to be released August 26)

I have not yet read any R.F. Kuang, despite seeing all the hype for Yellowface and Babel. But perhaps this new one will be the perfect place to start. Katabasis—or, a journey to the underworld—was one of the first literary tropes I remember ever learning about, a seed planted in my grade school education that would eventually grow into the interests that led me to create this blog. I’m excited to see how R.F. Kuang tackles this most ancient of literary tropes in a dark academia setting. Alice Law has sacrificed everything to be able to study magic with renowned Cambridge professor Jacob Grimes. So when a magical accident casts Grimes into Hell before he can even write Alice a recommendation letter, she has no choice but to go in after him. I’m seeing some parallels to Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent here, but perhaps it’s no surprise that some academics might equate part of the university experience with a journey through the fiery pits of hell….

10) Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell (set to be released October 7)

And lastly, one more plant horror book. I’m not familiar with this author, but when I saw that this was a queer reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1844 story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” I knew I had to add it to the list! 

 

What’s on your reading list for 2025? Any good Gothic or horror books I didn’t include here? Are any of these going in your TBR pile? Let me know in the comments!

My 2024 Reading Recap

I can’t believe 2024 is already drawing to an end! This has been another great reading year for me. While not quite the high of 2023—which I called one of the best reading years of my adult life—I’m quite happy with both the quality and quantity of books I read this year. 

Photo of crochet snake, curled in a circle around a paper key showcasing how each color of yarn represents a genre
I’m still adding my August books to the Book Snake…

Continue reading My 2024 Reading Recap

If I Stopped Haunting You—Horromance

If I Stopped Haunting You coverWhat better way to fall in love than by running through the halls of a haunted house together? I have been absolutely sleeping on the horrormance subgenre, which combines—you guessed it!—horror and romance. At first glance, you might  think these genres are complete opposites and wouldn’t blend well. But when you think about it some more, it makes sense: Both horror and romance are about putting characters in extreme situations to explore particular emotions at their heights. If I Stopped Haunting You, a debut horrormance by Colby Wilkens that came out in October, has completely sold me on the genre combo! Continue reading If I Stopped Haunting You—Horromance

Death Becomes Her—Musical Comedy Revitalized

What if you could live forever . . . but so could your worst enemy? This is the premise of the cult classic film Death Becomes Her, which has recently been adapted for Broadway! The 1992 black comedy film, starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, is celebrated for its high camp and ridiculous violence as the two ruthless rivals wreak havoc on each other’s immortal bodies as they fight over the same man. The new musical adapts the story for both the stage and the twenty-first century. I got the chance to see it in previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre earlier this month and was absolutely delighted! The show officially opens this Thursday, November 21.

Death Becomes Her: Musical Comedy Revitalized official poster, showing Madeline and Helen with their iconic injuries Continue reading Death Becomes Her—Musical Comedy Revitalized

#AScareADay 2024 Reading Challenge Reflections

If you saw my Preview of #AScareADay Reading Challenge 2024 post last month, you’ll know I spent my October reading 31 scary stories and poems curated by Dr. Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic. This was my third year participating in this spooky season reading challenge, and I loved it more than ever! Every year, I discover new-to-me authors, both contemporary and from centuries past, that I’m excited to explore further. These challenges are also a great reminder of how much I love short stories and poetry—forms I don’t devote quite as much attention to as novels. Plus, this year we explored a format I’ve never really read before: short webcomics. You can find the stories for this year’s reading challenge here, and check out the #AScareADay hashtag on Twitter and Bluesky to see the great discussions we’ve been having all month. Read on to see what I thought of the specific stories from this year’s challenge and stick around to the end of this post to hear about my recent guest appearance on a podcast! Continue reading #AScareADay 2024 Reading Challenge Reflections

Review of The Spite House—An Emotional Haunting

The Spite House coverNeed a good haunted house book for Halloween that will genuinely send shivers down your spine? Johnny Compton’s debut horror novel, The Spite House, which came out last year, features a desperate dad who moves with his two daughters into a strangely built house haunted by a handful of ghosts and generations of spite.  Continue reading Review of The Spite House—An Emotional Haunting

Review of The Marrow Thieves—Indigenous Dystopia

The Marrow Thieves coverWould an apocalyptic future cause history to repeat itself? Cherie Dimaline explores this question in terms of the persecution of Canada’s indigenous peoples in her YA dystopia novel The Marrow Thieves, which came out back in 2017. Continue reading Review of The Marrow Thieves—Indigenous Dystopia

Preview of #AScareADay Reading Challenge 2024

Why celebrate just one day of Halloween when you can read a spooky story for each day of October? For the third year in a row, Dr. Sam Hirst, founder of Romancing the Gothic, has put together a reading challenge that features thirty-one poems and short stories from across history and Gothic subgenres to get us into the Halloween spirit. The challenge started in 2022 using the hashtag #AGhostADay and focusing on tales of revenants and spirits of the dead. Last year, Sam expanded the focus to include all different areas of the weird and macabre and changed the hashtag to #AScareADay. You can read my recap of last year’s challenge here. This year, #AScareADay is back and I’m more excited than ever! You can see the full reading list, complete with links for where to find each story or poem, on the Romancing the Gothic website and join the discussion using the hashtag #AScareADay on Twitter or Bluesky. (I will try to post on both platforms as I finish each story.) Continue reading Preview of #AScareADay Reading Challenge 2024

Review of Lady Macbeth—A Grimdark Reimagining

Lady Macbeth cover“Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable female characters, but what is it that motivates this murderess in the Scottish Play? Ava Reid uses this Shakespearean drama as loose inspiration for her gritty medieval fantasy tale Lady Macbeth, which came out last month. Continue reading Review of Lady Macbeth—A Grimdark Reimagining

Review of Mortimer and the Witches—Niche New York History

Mortimer and the Witches coverNew York largely stayed out of the witch trial hysteria that plagued much of New England in the seventeenth century. But nearly two centuries later, New York City was engaged in a different kind of witch hunt: cracking down on the working-class women who earned their bread as fortune tellers on the Lower East Side. This movement was led in large part by the journalists who entertained their readers by seeking out these women’s services only to write mocking, derisive articles about their experience in the papers. In Mortimer and the Witches, a new nonfiction book that came out earlier this year, historian and NYC tour guide Marie Carter interweaves the biography of one such journalist with a study of the fortune tellers whose livelihoods he so reviled.  Continue reading Review of Mortimer and the Witches—Niche New York History