Books
13 Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021
It’s only February, and it’s already clear that 2021 will be loaded with horror content.
That extends to books, too.
Beyond streaming, VOD, and theatrical releases, there’s an insane plethora of spine-tingling tales of terror in book form slated for release this year. In 2021, there’s something for all horror tastes and preferences, from new releases by beloved favorites to novel debuts by upcoming authors.
We narrowed it down to the thirteen most anticipated genre books we can’t wait to read.
What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo – February 2
Author Rose Szabo makes their debut with this dark gothic fantasy. The plot follows Eleanor Zarrin, who hasn’t seen or spoken to her family since they sent her away to boarding school. After a horrifying accident causes her to flee the school, Eleanor goes to the only place she knows- home. She struggles to fit in with monstrous relatives that prowl the woods or read fortunes from guts, but when an incident changes everything, Eleanor will have to embrace her inner darkness to help her family survive.
Later by Stephen King – March 2
Jamie Conklin was born with a unique ability that his single mother urges to keep a secret. His wish for a normal childhood goes unheeded, though, when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a serial killer who threatens that death won’t slow them down. New Stephen King reads always make for an easy choice on any most anticipated list, but Later’s shorter page count teases a straightforward, breezy story to devour.
The Lost Village by Camilla Sten – March 23
Described as The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar, Sten’s latest follows documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt’s obsession with vanishing residents of an old mining town. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and she’s been haunted ever since by the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left. Alice enlists a crew to document the old village and find answers, but strange things start happening straight away. They’re not alone.
Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman – April 6
Inspired by the McMartin preschool trials and the Satanic Panic of the ’80s, the author of The Remaking takes on true-crime horror. During childhood, Richard went by another name. Having just moved to a new town with his mother, he started a white lie that ignited and spread like wildfire, engulfing an entire nation. Thirty years later, someone wants to remind Richard they know what he did and that someone has to pay.
The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky – April 13
New girl Rachel Chavez is eager to make a fresh start at Manchester Prep but winds up making enemies instead thanks to a prank gone wrong. It attracts the attention of a secret club of students with the sole objective to come up with the scariest prank ever to induce real fear. As the antics escalate, things get cutthroat and dangerous in this YA thriller.
Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito – April 20
The latest by twisted horror master and manga artist Junji Ito collects ten short stories, starting with the bloody “Lovesickness.” Innocent love turns into a nightmarish hell.
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix – July 13
Hendrix’s latest barely even announced a release date before rights were snatched up and a series adaptation was put in motion. Based on the plot, which follows survivors of real-life crimes that inspired beloved slasher favorites, we’re already sold. Expect Hendrix to inject heart and horror homages while subverting slasher tropes.
The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig – July 20
A family of three moves back to their hometown, where unspeakable horrors traumatized the parents during their childhood. What happened then is happening all over again, and the family will have to fight for their souls as dark magic puts them in the middle of a good versus evil battle.
Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar – August 17
From the author of Gwendy’s Button Box comes a true-crime horror novel described as a cross between Stephen King and Michelle McNamara. In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to conclude a serial killer is on the loose, but rumors start to spread that the culprit isn’t quite human. Chizmar puts himself in the story to tell a personal account of the serial killer’s reign of terror, unaware that these events will continue to haunt him.
My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones – August 31
Jade feels like she’s trapped in a slasher film as tourists go missing, and the tension between her community and the celebrity newcomers to her rural lake town reaches a fever pitch. Only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for this. This one should be a must between the author’s own slasher knowledge and last year’s thrilling The Only Good Indians.
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt – October 12
From the author of horror fave Hex, also receiving an updated release this year, comes a new tale of terror. Nick Grevers and his climbing buddy Augustin are drawn to the Maudit, a remote mountain peak in the Swiss Alps. It’s a quiet and mostly unexplored mountain, and the pair senses that they’re not alone. Then Nick wakes from a coma to learn that he’s badly maimed and his buddy is dead. He realizes it’s not just the trauma of that night that haunts him.
The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling – October 19
The author of The Luminous Dead takes on a Crimson Peak-inspired Gothic horror novel. It’ll follow a woman who makes a hasty marriage of convenience and finds herself trapped in a possibly haunted, decrepit mansion. The woman turns to ritual magic to save them both.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw – October 19
An abandoned Heian-era mansion filled with remains of a bride and sacrificed girls becomes a definitive wedding destination for thrill-seekers. It turns a night of merriment into a chilling nightmare when the hungry bride wakes. Khaw’s latest is a creepy haunted house novella infused with Japanese folklore.
Chuck Tingle‘s writing is embedded with a particular tonal trick that makes him perfectly suited to horror. “Propulsive” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tingle’s energetic prose, and when his books start wrapping themselves around characters and digging through their various complexities, it’s easy to be pulled along, absorbed in the feeling that an old friend is simply telling you a story.
Then Tingle will drop one of the single creepiest bits of imagery you’ve ever read, and you’re right back in the horror space. It’s not always a jump scare, but it is always a pulsing feeling of dread that keeps you hooked through the rest of the book.
Fabulous Bodies, Tingle’s latest horror novel, carries on these gifts, and the promise Tingle showed on books like Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. His fiction’s growing ever more confident and precise, and his eye for horrific detail hasn’t dimmed in the least, making this a summer reading delight for horror fans.
Poppy is a single mother determined to make a better life for her daughter, particularly after growing up in group homes and foster systems. By day, she works hard to keep up the flow of upbeat, enthusiastic content as a fashion influencer, and while that’s going well, it’s not yet making ends meet. To make up the difference, she moonlights as a grave robber, lifting bodies from morgues and funeral homes and selling their pieces on the black market. It’s grueling, dangerous work, and it’s about to pay off big. Out of the blue, Poppy gets a call to transport the newly dead body of her musical hero, the legendary Eddie Michaels. It’s a weird gig, but the payout is big enough that she could walk away from her macabre side gig forever. Poppy takes the job, and things get complicated when Eddie turns out to be, well, only mostly dead.
From the moment Eddie’s corpse enters the picture, Fabulous Bodies takes on the vibe of a road novel, as the grave robber and the undead rock star make stop after stop, and Poppy tries again and again to wrap her mind about what she’s gotten herself into, and how she might get herself out. It’s a delightful premise, and Tingle never loses his grip on the fun of it. No matter how dark the novel gets, and it does get quite dark, the narrative keeps barreling forward, delivering macabre laughs and moments of beautifully gruesome invention along the way.
Because he’s set his protagonist up as a fashion influencer, Tingle has lots of room to play in the space of how we view human bodies, both alive and dead, how we use them, and what we value in them. This is the emotional core of Fabulous Bodies, and while it’s sometimes overshadowed by the runaway train of the plot, it remains a potent source of thematic exploration throughout the book, and it gets more complicated when you consider certain gifts Eddie’s been granted in his strange supernatural state.
In essence, we’re looking at a story about a grave robber who discovers a body that not only fights back, but takes control of any given situation. That throws Poppy for repeated loops and keeps the plot moving, but it also makes us consider on a deeper level exactly what we value about our own physical form, and what might happen when we lose our grip on it entirely.
The book’s themes and emotional concerns hum through the whole narrative, but the overwhelming impression I got while reading Fabulous Bodies was just how much damn fun this book is. I couldn’t stop reading it, not just because it’s so filled with sudden swerves and ghoulish setpieces, but because Tingle has honed his horror storytelling down to a fine, very sharp point. Fabulous Bodies moves like a roller coaster, complete with a tension-filled ramp-up and a finale that’ll leave you breathless by the time the ride is over.
If you haven’t been reading Chuck Tingle’s horror work up to this point, it’s time to get on board, because he’s just getting started, and he’s already mastered the art of the scary page-turner.
Fabulous Bodies is available now.
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