The Malevolent Dark Horror Fiction Top 25 June 2024 Edition
Check out the charts for May, April, March, February, and January
1. You Like It Darker by Stephen King
A collection of 12 short stories by the King of horror.
2. Shadow’s Prey by Dan Padavona
Book 8 in the Darkwater Cove series finds a former FBI profiler in a race to stop a murderer before he reaches her children.
3. My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
When someone is murdered, a woman with a spirit companion and a mutual attraction with a wealthy widow must prove what is at fault or risk losing everything she holds dear.
4. Voracious by Wrath James White
A genius doctor creates a genetic weight-loss treatment using a synthetic retro virus to transport pygmy shrew DNA into clients, but the side effects are voracious when clients burn more calories than they can possibly consume.
5. The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry
A single mother working as a housekeeper in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets when she starts hearing noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help from behind a locked door.
6. Dead End Tunnel by Nick Roberts
A man unable to forget the chilling events of his thirteenth birthday in the summer of 1999 returns to his old neighborhood to resolve the terrifying mystery that has haunted him for decades.
7. Rotten Tommy by David Sodergren
Forty years after her mother vanished without a trace, a woman makes a strange discovery that may hold the key to solving her mother’s disappearance but also summons a long-forgotten nightmare.
8. The Horror of Styre House by Amy Cross
The third and final book in the Smythe Trilogy about an abandoned English cottage that still bears the scars of its terrifying past and where an evil creature lurks in the shadows and waits.
9. Kosa by John Durgin
A girl with a powerful ability and hidden away from the outside world under the strict rule of her enigmatic mother begins unraveling the intricacies of control to learn the true nature of the world beyond her home.
10. Old Monsters Never Die by Tim Waggoner
A story collection of 18 provocative tales of terror that explore the darkest corners of the human mind by the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author.
11. Student of Death by Iain Rob Wright
Book 1 of the Flesch and Stone series is about two investigators — one a retired army captain, the other a former cannibalistic serial killer — who must work together when a young girl is found tortured and mutilated at an abandoned train station.
12. The Undead Twenty-Nine: Hindhead: Part 1 by RR Haywood
In Season Five of the long-running zombie series, the Battle for Gatwick is over, but the team is broken, and the darkest days still lie ahead. The Undead 30: Hindhead: Part 2 is also available.
13. The Last Sound by Jack Hunt
After a mysterious sound decimates society’s sense of hearing, leaving the world deaf, a divorced mother finds herself trapped in a remote farmhouse with her daughter facing an unseen threat.
14. American Narcissus by Chandler Morrison
A satirical exploration on finding love in all the wrong places follows a cast of lost souls who search for meaning and connection in a world without a future.
15. Blood Covenant by Alan Baxter
When a bank heist gang fleeing from a job gone wrong takes a family hostage at a remote lodge, an ancient evil is awakened, and a teen boy unseen by the criminals is his family’s only hope for survival.
16. NecroTek by Jonathan Maberry
Book 1 in the NecroTek series is a sci-fi thriller full of ghosts, gods, and a battle for the soul of humanity by the five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author.
17. Cry of the Wendigo by D.A. Roberts
In the foreboding American frontier of 1865, Declan Caine and his Nightmare Hunters are dispatched by the U.S. Marshals to try to stop a creature of legend from destroying nearby settlements.
18. You Invited It In by Sarah Jules
A man who sees the spirits of the dead hires a fraudulent psychic hoping to expose her as a scam artist but finds himself haunted for real by something that is out for blood.
19. Shadows in the Stacks edited by Vincent V. Cava, James Sabata, and Jared Sage
A horror anthology published in cooperation with Spirited Giving to benefit the San Diego Library Foundation features a foreword by Laurel Hightower and 21 all-new stories from a wide range of authors, including Kevin David Anderson, Zachary Ashford, S.A. Bradley, Bridget D. Brave, Kel Byron, Vincent V. Cava, Clay McLeod Chapman, Rebecca Cuthbert, Alexis DuBon, Jamie Flanagan, Douglas Ford, Evelyn Freeling, Ai Jiang, Lucy Leitner, Jonathan Maberry, J.A.W. McCarthy. Tim McGregor. John Palisano, James Sabata, William Sterling, and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.
20. The Night Singers by London Clarke
Subtitled Gothic Horror Set in the Low Country, The Night Singers is about a ghostwriter who lands her dream job: penning the memoir of her 1990s rockstar crush. However, the secluded rockstar lives on a remote island where sinister secrets hide and something malevolent hunts in a tale exploring the echoes of the past and the demented and dangerous journey that can lead to success or ruin.
21. Mother Knows Best edited by Lindy Ryan
An anthology of new and exclusive short stories and poems inspired by bad mothers from some of the genre’s top female horror authors, including Rachel Harrison, Gwendolyn Kiste, Kristi DeMeester, and Kelsea Yu, along with many more. Features a foreword by Bram Stoker Award winner Sadie “ Mother Horror” Hartmann.
22. Old Too Soon by Brian Bowyer
A bleak, transgressive coming-of-age novel, Old Too Soon is about a grieving alcoholic woman who turns to a life of crime before meeting the girl of her dreams. When she gets locked up, her now ex-girlfriend begins dating her cousin — a serial killer who collects human skulls.
23. I Think I’m Alone Now by Ali Seay
The neighborhood creeper watches a feral Gen X latchkey girl whose life and body are in turmoil. When she finally faces him, she discovers the reason for his obsession.
24. Somnium by Deirdre Swinden
A blend of psychological horror and high-tech science fiction, Somnium is about a woman who experiences monstrously intense nightmares thanks to a glitch in groundbreaking dream advertising technology. When an accident traps her in a perpetual dream state, she must rely on two men to navigate the nightmarish reality in a race against time that could unleash unimaginable horrors from the depths of her mind.
25. Silent, Dark, and Deep by Rod Labbe
In a small town during the 1930s, kids from miles around dive into the deep waters of a rock quarry known as “The Crusher” every summer. But what those kids don’t know was that if they lost their lives in those waters, they would be stolen away to become another “midnight swimmer” — not under heaven, not under hell, not even in purgatory, but somewhere in between. Listen closely and you might hear those taken whispering for you to join them.
THE NEXT TEN
The next 10 releases just outside the Top 25 chart:
26. The Crow Tree by Ben Cheetham
27. When the Lights Go Out by Kevin Lucia
28. The Dead Also Have Secrets: A Lorne Turner Supernatural Thriiler by Joe Talon
29. The Witches of Bellinas by J. Nicole Jones
30. Your Loved Ones Will Die First by Jonathan Butcher, Megan Stockton, Stuart Bray, and Ryan Harding
31. The Shriek-A-Rama Spook Show Experience by Judith Sonnet
32. Howls from the Scene of the Crime edited by Jessica Peter and Timaeus Bloom
33. For the Better by Daniel J. Volpe
34. Razortooth by Stephen Kozeniewski and Stevie Kopas
35. Down the Deep, Dark Hole by Matt Shaw