The Biggest Horror Books of 2025

If the world isn’t already scary enough, horror can provide a safe, controlled release of tension. It’s no wonder, then, that today horror is more popular than ever. 2025 has already seen the release of some hotly anticipated titles, including Eric LaRocca’s novella about a grieving dad, At Dark, I Become Loathsome, and the latest instant bestseller from Grady Hendrix, the devilishly good Witchcraft for Wayward Girls. 

Looking over the long, long list of forthcoming horror full-length novels, novellas, and fiction collections across publishers big and small, some trends are emerging on the horizon. There are sinister graphic novels like Markus Redmond’s Blood Slaves, and middle grade horror for younger readers such as Paul Tremblay’s Another. Westerns – both historical or modern – are having a moment, and murderous fungus is still growing strong for all those The Last of Us fans, too.  

Whether you like your scare gothic, cultish, sci-fi-tinged, or simply full of incomprehensible existential dread, the scariest monster of all might be your To Be Read pile.  

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

March 18, Saga

The New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians and I Was a Teenage Slasher (a Den of Geek Best Book of 2024) returns with an absorbing standalone historical novel that might not have chainsaws, but still spills buckets of blood. If you’ve watched recent Westerns like Netflix’s American Primeval, or remember any American history, you know this country’s story was born in violence. Jones makes the bloodshed even more literal in this chilling vampire tale. The 1912 diary of a Lutheran priest is discovered and contains a story within a story: the life and undeath of a Blackfoot warrior named Good Stab who struggles to keep his humanity as his appetite makes him a tool for vengeance. This is one of Jones’ most ambitious novels yet, and all the more horrific for the authenticity he brings to this exploration of trauma. But it’s also as hypnotic and fun as the eeriest of campfire tales. 

rekt by Alex Gonzales

March 25, Erewhon

The dark recesses of the internet and masculinity are a toxic combination in this sadistic, distressing debut novel that feels all too timely. After a car crash leaves Sammy descending into guilt and depression, he finds a sick solace in watching the most violent, disturbing videos online – including one of his girlfriend’s fatal wreck, and grisly deaths yet to be. A sinister algorithm seems to know just what pain Sammy needs and he must become something even worse to fight it. It’s Faces of Death meets Fight Club for the incel age of Andrew Tate in this unrepentant chiller that will surely fuel some interesting online discussions of its own.

The Butcher’s Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark

May 6, Hell’s Hundred

Vegetarians, beware! Horror retellings of fairy tales are always welcome, but what if the source material is instead an infamous penny dreadful? Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has his musical (and Tim Burton movie.) Now, his meat pie-baking partner in Victorian crime gets her due in this grisly, evocative historical mystery. Told through a collection of correspondence, including letters between a young female journalist and an old woman who may or may not be one “whose name we daren’t speak aloud for its profanity.” Well-researched and immersive – you’ll feel the grim, sooty reality of 19th-century London on your skin – this is a highbrow, Gothic spin on a sensationalist story populated with women who live, breathe… and bleed.

Never Flinch by Stephen King

May 27, Scribner

Is it unfair to include the indisputable king of horror when there are so many other incredible, talented horror authors who would benefit from a signal boost? Sure. But a new Stephen King novel remains a special event. Never Flinch weaves together two storylines about two different killers –one hell-bent on revenge, the other targeting a celebrity feminist activist. Recurring King character Holly Gibney, from Mr. Mercedes and If It Bleeds, plays a key role in this latest creepy thriller, making her a character in more King novels even than The Dark Tower’s Randall Flagg. Holly has always fought for the victims of evil men, but could this confrontation make her a true final girl?

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

July 15, Del Rey

Set in 1990s Massachusetts, a graduate student named Minerva is researching an obscure female author (and university alum) for her thesis on horror literature. The more Minerva uncovers about Beatrice Tremblay’s manuscript and her mysterious disappearance, the more the young woman recognizes elements of her own grandmother’s tales of witchcraft in 1900s Mexico. Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic, imbues her novel with evocative prose and razor-sharp wit to spectacular, creepy effect. Ghosts and witches abound as a haunting echoes through three generations of extraordinary women. 

A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper

August 12, Saga

Robert H. Chambers’ The King in Yellow was a cult hit brought into wider pop culture fame when it got name-checked in the first and fourth seasons of HBO’s True Detective. Piper, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, has crafted a new descent into Carcosa, but makes it very horny and very queer. Carmen and Blanca are in a loving but sexually dull marriage. They rediscover their spark by reading strange passages from the play The King in Yellow. Addicted to this escape from the mundane, the boundaries between Carmen’s world and the plays blur and bleed with kink, cosmic horror and the grotesque – often all at once. 

The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt

Sept 23, St. Martin’s Press

This debut novel from Shirley Jackson Award finalist Michael Wehunt is already garnering a long list of advance praise from genre heavy hitters (some of whom are already mentioned on this list.) Jorie Stroud, a horror blogger at the height of her fame, stayed overnight in a graveyard from from fictional infamous cult film Proof of Demons. Things did not go as planned and now, a decade later, Jorie finds herself being pulled into a sequel. Found-footage novels like Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie and Gemma Files’ Experimental Film are ripe for meta terror, and Wehunt’s deft talent for creating unbearable dread and weird-with-a-capital-W scenarios seems poised to get major attention from fans across literary borders.

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward

Oct 7, Nightfire

Home isn’t always a safe place. Actor Leaf Winham’s Nowhere ranch, set in the cold recesses of the Rocky Mountains, was once his sanctuary from fame – and playground for his most horrifying crimes – until it burned down in a fire. Now, a brother and sister escape their own unsafe home to seek refuge at Nowhere, which is rumored to house feral children. But acceptance into this mysterious, vicious clan won’t be easy, and something darker residing on the ranch might never let them leave. Perfect for fans of Yellowjackets and dark suspense novels from Riley Sager and Ruth Ware, as well as Ward’s own The Last House on Needless Street.

The post The Biggest Horror Books of 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.