Coffin Moon tops the Horror Fiction Top 40 October Edition
A gritty vampire novel, an epic Jersey devil tale, another visit to The Exorcist’s House, an elderly final girl slasher, and a science fiction horror thriller headline Malevolent Dark’s Horror Fiction Top 40 October 2025 Edition. To celebrate the spooky month, I expanded the Top 25 chart to highlight an additional 15 new releases from September. On a side note, this is the second anniversary of my chart. I started in October 2023 and I’d like to personally thank Malevolent Dark for supporting horror fiction by allowing me the space to spotlight 665 releases plus 150 honorable mentions over the past 24 months.
Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson tops this month’s chart. The author of Fever House and The Devil by Name takes readers on a pursuit between a Vietnam veteran accompanied by his adopted 13-year-old niece and the vampire who killed the vet’s wife. Described as “gritty, unforgettable, and emotionally devastating, Coffin Moon asks what will be left of our humanity when grief transmutes into violence, when monsters wear human faces, and when our thirst for revenge eclipses everything else.” Stephen King says, “This is mind-blowingly good. A horror novel that will keep you awake long after you turn the last page.” Two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Cassandra Khaw says on the cover, Coffin Moon “grabs you by the throat and doesn’t relent.”
Anthologies and Collections
Eight anthologies and collections are in the Top 40, giving fans of the horror short story plenty to read for the remainder of 2025.
The highest ranked anthology materializes at No. 14 with Pretend You Don’t See Her: The Invisible Woman edited by Jill Girardi and Lydia Prime. This offering from Kandisha Press features 21 stories about women revealing their true selves plus a foreword by two-time Splatterpunk Award-winning author and editor Candace Nola. The author lineup includes Emma Rose Darcy, Charlotte Brookins, Ruthann Jagge, Sally Darling, Lauren Lee Smith, Dawn DeBraal, Anne Wilkins, Meg Hafdahl, Allison Cellura, Mocha Pennington, Trish Wilson, Sonora Taylor, Carmen Baca, Brooklyn Ann Butler, Jen Mierisch, Candy Madonna, Eva Roslin, Nora B. Peevy, Nicole M. Wolverton, Valerie B. Williams, and Lillie Franks.
The highest ranked collection enters at No. 15 with Let Me in Your Window by Adam Ellis. A sequel to Bad Dreams in the Night, Let Me in Your Window is a ten-story collection billed as “your own personal campfire ghost stories packed into a graphic novel” and features Ellis’s blend of humor and horror brought to life with his illustrations and gripping narratives.
At No. 20 is the 25th entry in Kevin J. Kennedy’s The Horror Collection series titled Green Diamond Edition. It features 22 tales of the supernatural, the monstrous, and the unknown lurking inside us. The author lineup includes Brad Ricks, Hunter Shea, Richard Clive, Michael S.A. Graciano, Susan E. Rogers, Harrison Phillips, Bryan Alaspa, S.E. Howard, William Meikle, John Ward, Brian Moreland, Bill Davidson, Viggy Parr Hampton, Ryan Colley, Jeff Strand, Lex H Jones, Devin Cabrera, James Jobling, Elizabeth Massie, Mark Towse, Timothy King, and
At No. 21 is the first collection in Kevin Bachar’s Trilogy of Terror series titled Evil. The ten stories are about confronting evil and how it manifests and consumes the ones who think they can battle the darkness.
Checking in at No. 23 is Hotel of Haunts edited by Heather Daughrity. This themed anthology follows last year’s Hospital of Haunts and 2023’s House of Haunts. The latest offering from Watertower Hill Publishing is set in the lavish Hotel Ethel where 23 authors tell 23 stories set in various rooms and time periods of the building’s past. The book features a foreword by Lindy Ryan and includes stories by Christopher Badcock, Craig Brownlie, Rebecca Cuthbert, Heather Daughrity, Jason Daughrity, Savannah R. Fischer, Douglas Ford, Joshua Loyd Fox, Emma J. Gibbon, William Gray, Justin Holley, Caleb Jones, Bert Lestrange, Marie Lestrange, Sirrah Medeiros, Briana Morgan, Susan H. Roddey, Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar, Steve Van Samson, Cat Scully, Katherine Silva, Alicia Toothman, and Patrick Tumblety.
At No. 27 is Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, a collection of 13 “coming-of-rage” stories by Hailey Piper, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth. Billed as “perfect for fans of Clive Barker, Mariana Enriquez, and Eric LaRocca,” the stories in Teenage Girls Can Be Demons “take our most difficult years of transformation and twist them into new and terrifying shapes, where the monsters are real and you’ll do whatever it takes to get away or get even.”
Rotting away at No. 36 is Zombie Flesh Cult. The shared world anthology features four novellas by Florida horror authors who dwell within four different areas of the state: Armand Rosamilia, Kenzie Jennings, Lucas Milliron, and K. Trap Jones. The two questions of the premise: “What would happen if a zombie virus didn’t affect your mind or your inner organs, but just ate at your flesh? What if you could visit a Stitcher and simply replace or upgrade your limbs?” The authors explore characters with those questions in mind amidst a new zombie outbreak in their home state.
Oozing in at No. 37 is the Hellbound Books Anthology of Extreme Horror curated by Samantha Hawkins. This 18-story anthology features a foreword by seven-time Splatterpunk Award nominee Matt Shaw and tales from Shaw, Taylor Z. Adams, Priyanuj Mazumdar, Gabriel Giddings, Dave Davis, Paul Lonardo, Anthony Ferguson, Keith Durocher, Ronan Grey, Galo Romero, Kira Blackwood, James Patrick Riser, Dewey L. Yeatts, Daniel Rust, Brit Jones, James H Longmore, and Joe Pasquale.
The Rest of the Top 10
At No. 7 is Breathe in, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley. Billed as Midsommar night’s Scream, this horror thriller is set at a remote healing retreat. Four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones says McAuley “keeps you guessing the whole gory, satisfying way through this one. Come to this retreat for the blood. Stay for the healing.” It also starts with one of the best opening lines I read in September: “Dragging a body through six inches of snow is even harder than I expected.”
The conclusion to Jack Finn’s Wolves of Kalinin duology, The Desolation of Hunters, is No. 8 on the chart. The duology is an epic werewolf tale set in the final days of Czarist Russia.
At No. 9 is Longsight M40 by Tyler Jones. This moody coming-of-age novella is set against the eerie backdrop of a traveling retro Halloween carnival. Combining the emotions of a troubled teen boy and the discovery of an antique fortune-telling machine, Longsight M40 asks: “What do we risk when we dare to see the future?”
Rounding out the Top 10 is the Halloween advent novel The 31st Trick-or-Treater by Ben Farthing. After 30 trick-or-treaters vanished into the night last Halloween, they’re returning one by one, each day of the month, this Halloween with the same chilling warning: something is returning on the 31st. One of the fathers of the missing children has never stopped searching for his daughter, but now he must face the darkness that stole her.
Hauntings
Looking for a story about a haunted bed and breakfast? Check out the novel at No. 11, Lovers’ Leap by Rikki Goodwin.
Fans of The Exorcist and Insidious should enjoy the sequel to Samuel Small’s The Well titled The Institute. No. 12 on the chart, The Institute is a haunting tale of an orphanage plagued by a malevolent force.
Other ghostly entries on the October chart include the No. 18 title, The Woman in the Widow’s Lace by Steve Griffin, the fifth book in The Ghosts of Alice series about a young woman with a mysterious connection to the dead.
At No. 30 is The Whistler by Nick Medina about a young man haunted by a mythological specter bent on stealing everything he loves.
Amy Cross lands at No. 38 on the chart with 9pm. Book 2 in The Haunting of London series, 9pm is about a woman who discovers a newborn baby on the step of her local church; however, an evil entity inside the church wants the child, prompting a battle for the life of the baby.
Extreme Horror
Fans of White’s 2023 novella Rabbit Hunt should enjoy Emily because it’s about her own reign of terror. Before she joined Mooky, Rashad, Steve, and Big Mike in Rabbit Hunt, Emily kidnapped, tortured, and murdered young men and women in her father’s basement. Law enforcement launches a manhunt to find Emily, and they bring in Emily’s ex-girlfriend, Cala, for questioning. Cala is not just a witness but another of Emily’s victims with her own horrifying tale of torture, abuse, murder, demonic rituals, and blood-soaked orgies. White, by the way, was a 2024 recipient of the J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror subgenres.
Heirs to the Dark Web is another hardcore horror novel with a warning for all triggers (except animal cruelty). This one’s about a couple of bullied kids — Nate whose religious family is shamed by his father’s sins and Jamie whose mother is a promiscuous drunk. Jamie desires revenge on his abusers, and when he stumbles upon the hurtcore scene of the dark web, his life changes. With the help of his gullible new friend Nate, Jamie unleashes all his pent-up anger while earning a fortune on the dark web.
Six First Chapters I Enjoyed
When I compile Malevolent Dark’s Horror Fiction chart, I at least read the first chapters of virtually every release I consider for the list. I’m always interested in how authors begin their stories. Here are six first chapters that grabbed my attention in one way or another and kept me reading.
The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (No. 24) is about a woman named Sadie who hears talking dead animals and a comforting male voice in her head. Her therapist insists it’s PTSD from the murders 17 years ago when she hid under the bed and watched as her best friends were slaughtered. Chapter 1 opens with a dead raven on Sadie’s doorstep saying in the voice of one of her murdered friends: “You shouldn’t have lived. You should’ve died with us.”
At No. 25 is I Kill in Peace by Hunter Shea. This one’s about a regular guy named Peter — suburban dad, loyal husband, corporate drone — who loses his job followed quickly by his grip on reality. Anonymous messages flood his digital devices, giving him an address, a target to kill, and a weapon. Peter is unraveling fast, but who or what is pulling his strings? Is Peter saving the world or helping destroy it? The opening chapter begins with Peter receiving a mysterious instant message from someone with the initials AO telling him: “Marcellus is going to call u into his office at 5. He’s laying u off.” Peter thinks the message is a joke and asks, “Who is this?” AO responds, “Someone who’s looking out for u?” When his boss lays him off at 5 o’clock, Peter returns to his desk to a message from AO asking, “Are u OK?” An upset Peter replies, “How did you know?” AO answers, “I know a lot. Are u angry?” “Of course I am,” Peter responds. AO says, “Good.” A miffed Peter asks, “Why is that good?” The chapter ends with AO’s chilling reply: “Because u won’t feel so bad when u kill him.”
Chalupacabra Y2K by V.S. Lawrence (No. 26) is a horror comedy about what happens after a couple of bored employees at the TicoTaco deep-fry a new menu item that they shouldn’t have. It awakens a greasy creature that leaves behind a trail of drained bodies. The first chapter — titled “It Smells Like Onions in Here” — really captures the drudgery of working at a fast-food taco joint and the conversation among employees. My favorite line: “Walking into a TicoTaco was like getting sucker-punched by the angry ghost of an onion farmer.”
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey (No. 32) is a darkly seductive tale of survival set at an isolated research station in the desert. The story takes a deadly turn when the research team discovers a mysterious specimen that “looks like a six-legged multi-segmented coyote” buried in the sand and in search of a new host. From the first two lines (“The specimen is breathing. Kinsey is the first to see it.”), Spread Me creates a sense of foreboding as the research team brings the specimen back to the station for study. The main character Kinsey seems weirdly drawn to the specimen and notices details about it that the others don’t. “Once she saw the sand fall onto its tongue. Once she saw it choke on a tiny, silent cough.” And you know you’re in for an unsettling ride when Kinsey feels “she needs to be alone with the thing they’ve found. She needs it.”
Finally, at No. 40 is The Greatest Christmas Story Ever Told by Peter Topside. Billed as a holiday version of The Monster Squad but with a ton of sex, violence, action, and naughty language, this novella is set in the North Pole, which is divided into different districts (Krampus, Jack Frost, Santa Claus, Christmas Spirits, and the Grouch) that all maintain a strange sort of harmony with one another. When a small batch of killer, self-aware toys decides to wreak havoc and threaten Christmas by turning the district figures against one another, it becomes an all-out war for the ages. Chapter One effectively establishes the irreverent tone of the story with the scene of an unhappy elf named Jangles driving a truck and dumping unwanted toys in a snowy landfill. Jangles hates his job but still worries about his effort as he reminds himself while backing up, “If I ding this truck again, Santa will have me scooping reindeer shit for weeks.” There’s just something I like about a conflicted blue-collar elf using profanity and needing “a spiked egg nog” to get through the workday. I also loved the last paragraph in the chapter as Jangles drives away. “He adjusted the side mirror as the snowfall continued and picked up, and he swore he saw the arm of a teddy bear reaching for him. Jangles shook his head and drove off, assuming it was just the wind moving the debris around. Unfortunately, he was wrong.” I don’t know, but the image of that teddy bear arm reaching out just hit me right in the Christmas spirit.
That wraps up my report on this month’s chart. Without further ado, here’s the Top 40. As always, clicking on the book titles takes you to their Amazon pages where they can be purchased.