There isn’t a lot to be scared of during the month of April (outside the occasional intense, hair-raising April Fool’s prank), there are plenty of horror novels hitting shelves to be excited about.
This month, in particular, features a terrifying house, a serial killer who could give Hannibal a run for his money, and a work of historical fiction where the dead don’t stay that way. Unless maybe you’re Stephen King, these books should haunt you — at least until May.
3
Odessa by Gabielle Sher
Set in 20th-century Russia during the pogroms and inspired by Jewish folklore, Odessa tells the story of Yetta, a teenage girl who meets an abrupt and violent death despite her mother and father’s efforts to keep her safe.
Overcome by grief, Yetta’s father uses what little knowledge he has of old magic in order to bring his daughter back. But, like in many stories where the dead come back to life, Yetta returns to her family changed. What once was a girl is now a Golem, torn between undying loyalty to her family and her own agency.
Supernatural and horror elements enmesh to bone-chilling results in Gabrielle Sher’s Gothic debut.
Odessa is available for preorder for as low as $29.00 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
When Macy Mullins — grieving the loss of her father, drowning in debt, and struggling to raise her younger sister — comes across a house sitting job on Craigslist, she jumps at the opportunity to fill the position. Three days in a stranger’s house on the remote coast of Oregon should be a breeze. Sure, the current owner of the house leaves Macy an old VHS tape recording of her late husband explaining the increasingly bizarre rules she must follow while staying there, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
What begins as a walk in the park, however, quickly becomes a waking nightmare for Macy as she’s pitted against increasingly difficult tasks and an incomprehensible, otherworldly monster capable of destroying the world as we know it.
The Caretaker is available for preorder for as low as $20.30 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org
Clocking in at only 176 pages, Bodies of Work is the shortest book on this list, but it packs a punch.
66-year-old Winston Kemper is used to being ignored. Winston has no friends or family and spends most of his time working as a janitor at the local church, taking care of the building and its grounds. At the end of each day, he returns home to work on his bloody magnum opus: The Butterfly Girls.
Winston has been kidnapping and killing young women, and creating sprawling, gory imagery in their likeness within his home, a project that would send chills up the spine of the Red Dragon himself. Not chill. The book is told through his victims’ point of view, with each woman recounting their life story leading up to the moment when Winston uses their bodies for his art.
Bodies of Work is available for $19.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org