Shivers collection dominates the Horror Fiction Top 25 – May 2025 chart
Let’s get started.
All five short stories in The Shivers collection cracked the Top 10 on the May 2025 chart. However, it was the novel — or rather five novels — that edged out The Shivers collection for the top spots.
Released by Amazon Original Stories on April 15, The Shivers collection features a quintet of horror heavyweights: Grady Hendrix, Owen King, Catriona Ward, Joe Hill, and Stephen Graham Jones. Their short stories, ranging from 35 to 46 pages in length, comprise half of the Top 10, taking the 6th through 10th spots on the chart.
Hendrix’s “The Blanks” is No. 6 and is about an island where the residents have an unspoken pact with its unnatural inhabitants until a woman’s son comes face to face with the terror. Hendrix is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction. His bestselling novel Witchcraft for Wayward Girls topped the Horror Fiction Top 25 February 2025 chart.
Owen King’s “Letter Slot” delivers a No. 7 ranking. The story is about a struggling teenager who senses his mother’s failing health and drops a letter about his worries through the mail slot of an abandoned show house. When a surprising response arrives, it promises good fortune for the price of a name of someone he hates. The teen would do anything for his mother, but the cost may be more than he’s willing to pay. King is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Sleeping Beauties, a novel he co-authored with Stephen King.
“Night and Day in Misery” by Catriona Ward is No. 8 and tells the story of a woman who books the same room where her husband and son made their last stop, hoping to commune with their memories. Instead, disturbing visions blur the lines between reality and the supernatural, and the other side sends a terrifying message. Ward’s novel Sundial was a 2022 Bram Stoker Award nominee.
Joe Hill’s “Jackknife” ranks No. 9 and is about a man ruined by scandal and hoping for a comeback. While on a walk, he discovers a decades-old jackknife stuck in the trunk of a gnarled old sycamore and removes it, allowing something evil to awaken. Hill is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Heart-Shaped Box.
At No. 10 is “The Indigo Room” by Stephen Graham Jones. The story is about a middle manager who has a disturbing vision during a slideshow at work. When her ex unexpectedly drops off her son at the office after school, suddenly her whole world takes an alarming turn. Jones is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of My Heart is a Chainsaw and The Only Good Indians. His novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter topped last month’s Horror Fiction Top 25 April 2025 chart.
The Top 5
When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy tops the May 2025 chart. Cassidy, by the way, recently earned his first-ever Bram Stoker Award nomination for Rest Stop. When the Wolf Comes Home is about a struggling actress who finds a 5-year-old boy hiding in the bushes outside her apartment, which leads to them running for their lives from the boy’s violent and desperate father. It also leads the actress to the eventual understanding that there’s more to the boy than meets the eye.
The book is receiving rave reviews from big-time horror authors like Stephen King (“Sink your teeth into a classic”) and Joe Hill (“A crazy-good, balls-to-the-wall horror novel”). Grady Hendrix says When the Wolf Comes Home “is the kind of great, big, epic horror novel we got back in the ’80s that came out swinging for the fences and left everything on the field. Welcome back, you shaggy, bloody monster of a book!”
Two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Todd Keisling lands at No. 2 with The Sundowner’s Dance. It’s billed as a “heartfelt and unsettling” novel that “propels readers through a terrifying exploration of grief, dementia, and perhaps the greatest horror of all: growing old.” The story is about a grief-stricken elderly widower and recent retiree who is desperate for a change of scenery after the death of his wife. However, his new home in a Poconos retirement community is filled with strangeness, and he suspects it’s linked to the huge stone in the community park.
Three Bram Stoker Award winners are singing the praises of The Sundowner’s Dance.
“Todd Keisling is already a mainstay of modern horror, and this book proves why,” says Gwendolyn Kiste. “A wildly original and unsettling tale, The Sundowner’s Dance is an unforgettable journey of grief, cosmic horror, and making the most of the time we’ve got left. Pick up a copy of this book immediately.”
Brian Keene calls The Sundowner’s Dance “a harrowing work of cosmic horror that masterfully inhabits a dark territory somewhere between John Langan and Bentley Little. Highly recommended.”
Christa Carmen says “Reading The Sundowner’s Dance is a bit like casting a spell to ward off existential dread despite the greatest terrors of the novel evoking this very thing; the beauty and hopefulness at the core of the story refuse to be stamped out by either the wrath of an alien invader or the ravages of age. It’s Todd Keisling at his absolute finest: dark, unflinching, visceral, and innovative. His pitch-perfect prose and masterful storytelling will leave you, quite literally, breathless.”
At No. 3 is The Staircase in the Woods by three-time Bram Stoker Award nominee Chuck Wendig. This novel is about a group of high school friends who find a mysterious staircase to nowhere while on a camping trip in the middle of the forest. One friend walks up and never comes back down as the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase reappears, and the group returns to investigate the mystery of their missing friend.
Kiersten White, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, says Wendig “weaves his magic once more, turning a lonely staircase in the woods into a searing, propulsive, dread-filled exploration of the horrors of knowing and being known.”
Senseless by Bram Stoker Award nominee Ronald Malfi is No. 4 on the chart, and it’s billed as “Zodiac with teeth” and perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Lauren Beukes. Set in Los Angeles, Senseless follows three storylines: a detective with a dark secret, a Hollywood producer’s fiancée dealing with an unstable visitor, and an obsessed man trapped under the spell of a dangerous woman. Their storylines “converge to create a tapestry of deceit, distrust, and unapologetic horror.”
A Nest of Broken Bones by John Ashley rounds out the Top 5. It’s about a successful romance novelist who must do monstrous things as a mother to provide for her miracle son who has different needs. Later in this article I’ll highlight how Chapter 2 of A Nest of Broken Bones is just so creepy and well-written.
Anthologies and Collections
Two collections and one anthology are among the Top 25.
Two-time Splatterpunk Award winner Bridgett Nelson ranks No. 17 with Embracing the Profane, a collection of 15 stories showcasing her brand of disturbing extreme horror. The collection features “Mac & Millie,” her collaboration with Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jeff Strand, and one of the most ghoulishly beautiful covers of 2025 courtesy of artist Wendy Saber Core.
At No. 21 is Oios Lycos, a collection by two-time Splatterpunk Awards-nominated author M Ennenbach. His collection features stories of small-town horror and themes of isolation, myth, cyberpunk, and bizarro. In an entertaining foreword, author/publisher RJ Roles writes, “When a new Ennenbach story hits the market, it really should be the talk of the town.”
Push: An Anthology of Childbirth Horror edited by Ruth Anna Evans arrives at No. 25. Push includes 17 stories promising “painful and dark” tales about childbirth. It features a foreword by two-time Splatterpunk Awards winner Candace Nola and stories by Evans, Antonija Meznaric, Nuno Goncalves, Marie Lestrange, Rebecca Burgess, Peter J. Larrivee, Deborah Coldiron, Patricia Lameida, Autumn Weese, S.E. Howard, Emma Rose Darcy, C.J. Subko, Jacy Morris, Amanda DeBord, Tory Favro, Paul Avery Tindol, and Sheri White.
Extreme Horror
Nelson’s collection and the two anthologies were not the only extreme horror entries on the chart.
Splatterpunk Award-winning author Daniel J. Volpe lands at No. 11 with his novella Runts. WARNING: This one starts with a bang. Runts tells the story of four college students on winter break who are forced to seek refuge during a blizzard in a town with a dark secret. The secret is that many of the children in the town were born with horrific mutations. Some parents killed the newborns; others surrendered them to an old woman known as Grammy. With the blizzard making food difficult to find, Grammy and her Runts are desperate to eat, and the four college students look tasty enough. Shout-out for the colorfully grotesque and outstanding cover art by Nick Justus.
Powered by rave reviews from readers, Rob Nelson’s debut novel Made a Monster ranks No. 12. It’s about a boy and a girl, both twisted with dark secrets, and what happens when they meet. Hint: it ain’t good.
Eternal Wives by Lesley Camphouse is next at No. 13. It tells the story of a woman who falls for a man and agrees to join his polyamorous community of wives. However, it’s not all love and peace as she must escape the first wife’s wrath and her husband’s obsession.
At No. 16 is Even After Death by Harrison Phillips. It’s about a wealthy widow who is visited by her deceased husband’s business associate and ends up being dragged into a world of violence and depravity.
Interesting Plots
An abbey with dark secrets. A horror tale told through the eyes of a mouse. Cartoon characters coming to life. A video game causing chaos in a small town. And a nostalgic camp slasher. These are five releases on the chart with plots that captured by attention.
No. 14 is The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton. It’s an historical horror novel about a newcomer to the cloistered Sisters of Divine Innocence who teams with a local priest to uncover the sinister secrets of the abbey. Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Clay McLeod Chapman says, “I am ready to join the Sisterhood of Viggy after reading The Rotting Room. Time to take my vows, now that I’ve novitiated on this awe-inspiring novel, and commit myself to a lifelong calling of reading whatever Parr Hampton writes.”
At No. 15 is The Twitching House by Ben Farthing. If you ever wanted to read a horror novel from the POV of a mouse, The Twitching House is written for you. It tells the story of a mouse named Nettle who flees the dangerous world outside with her newborn pups into the perceived safety of the Red House. However, something is there and already haunts the human family living inside. While unorthodox for a horror novel, the story works thanks to Farthing’s exceptional storytelling ability that had me invested in the fate of the courageous and loving Nettle by the end of the first chapter. I’m not sure if the Red House is a nod to Brian Jacque’s classic children’s novel Redwall, but Farthing manages to channel the heart of young Matthias via Nettle.
No. 19 on the chart is Looney, co-authored by Gavin Dillinger and Splatterpunk Award winner Stephen Kozeniewski. Looney is about an Army recruiter who sees her favorite cartoon characters crawling out of her TV after downing a stomachful of pills and booze. Is she hallucinating or is her descent into a world of cartoonish violence and psychological torment real?
At No. 20 is Polybius by Collin Armstrong. Billed as Stranger Things meets The Walking Dead, Polybius is based on an urban legend about a video game created by the government for psychological warfare. When the game arrives at a local arcade, the town is suddenly gripped by a virus-like epidemic as people begin experiencing fits of anger, paranoia, and hallucinations. Isolated by a coastal storm, the town descends into chaos after a grisly act of violence goes unsolved. “If you’re a fan of Stephen King and Stranger Things, then this is the book for you,” says Bram Stoker Award winner Richard Chizmar.
With Friends Like These by V.S. Lawrence is No. 23 on the chart. With the tagline “Girls camp can be hell,” the novel is a nostalgic yet still fresh take on the camp slasher trope. With Friends Like These is about a girl hoping for a summer of fun but instead faces unimaginable fear when a seemingly harmless prank to summon a demon unleashes a terror beyond her worst nightmares.
Cold Openings
I enjoy reading stories which deliver scenes early in their narrative that make me go, “Damn, that was cold.” Here are two of the books in the Top 25 that have those scenes. SPOILER ALERTS!
As I mentioned before, fifth-ranked A Nest of Broken Bones by John Ashley is a dark tale about a mother who’d rather let the world burn than lose her only son Malachi. The problem? Burning the world is exactly what her son was born to do. Plus, he’s a hungry boy who knows better than to play with his food. I think Chapter 2 is one of the most perfectly chilling scenes that I’ve read in 2025, especially when introducing a character. Malachi approaches a confused young man chained inside a barn. The guy asks the boy to get his mom. Malachi replies: “Momma already knows you’re here.” When the poor guy asks for his help, Malachi responds: “I can’t. It’ll be lunchtime in a minute.” Talk about a double blast of coldness. The writing is so cinematic that I could hear the creepy music stop at those moments just like it does in horror movies.
Finder Keepers by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jeff Strand is No. 24 on the chart. The third book in Strand’s Eek! series is about a mysterious scavenger hunt that takes a sinister turn. It’s geared toward middle-grade readers, but the Prologue is intense by adult standards. When a boy is caught cheating on one of the scavenger hunts for using his cellphone by the villain, he ends up pleading for his release: “My parents know I’m here. I’ll be missed.” The villain replies: “Of course, you’ll be missed. But will you be found?” Eek indeed. Enjoy this one, kids.
Anyway, that wraps up my thoughts on this month’s chart. Without further ado, here’s the Top 25. As always, clicking on the book titles takes you to their Amazon pages where they can be purchased.