Top Ten Tuesday; Horror and Paranormal Fiction by Authors of Colour

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and as it was genre freebie in terms of themes, I decided I wanted to write a top ten list of horror novels written by authors of colour.

Here's my ten picks.

Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh

Description from Goodreads

A powerful Nigeria-set tale of possession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets and murder from the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and 'Queen of African Horror'.

Bata, an eleven-year-old girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin's door. Her skin, hair, and eyes have turned a dazzling white colour, which even the medicine-man can't heal. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.

Through the night, Bata battles the vengeful ghost and finally vanquishes it before collapsing. On awakening, she has no recollection of the events. And when the medicine-man tries to exorcise the entities clinging to her body as a result of her supernatural possession, Bata dies on the exorcism mat. There begins her journey. She is taken into Ibaja-La, the realm of dead brides, by Mmuọ-Ka-Mmuọ, the ghost-collector of the spirit realm. There she meets the ghosts of brides from every culture who died tragically before their weddings; both the kind and the malevolent. Bata is given secret powers to fight the evil ghost-brides before being sent back to the human realm, where she must learn to harness her new abilities as she strives to protect those whom she loves.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Description from Goodreads

In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Description from Goodreads

A gloriously creepy Deep South horror story based on the infamous Dozier School for boys, perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians and Nothing But Blackened Teeth.

Jim Crow Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations...

Linghun by Ai Jiang

Description from Goodreads

From acclaimed author Ai Jiang, follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. to the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go. This edition includes a foreword by Yi Izzy Yu, Translator of The Shadow Book of Ji Yun, the essay "A Ramble on Di Fu Ling & Death" by the author, and two bonus short stories from Jiang: "Yǒngshí" and "Teeter Totter."

The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette's by Hanna Alkaf

Description from Goodreads

An all-girls private school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this chilling dark academia thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.

Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…

Ring by Kōji Suzuki

Description from Goodreads

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

Description from Goodreads

From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three 'saints' who control them.

The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

Includes the bonus short story, "And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice", set in the same universe.

The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran

Description from Goodreads

A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness.

When four isolated elderly people commit suicide back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn’t understand why she’s the only one at her precinct that seems to care. Dismissing the case as a series of unfortunate events due to the patients’ loneliness, the police force doesn't engage. But Su-Yeon doesn’t have the privilege of looking away. Her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.

As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Wanda at the crime scene. Wanda, hot on the trail of her ex-lover, Lily, gives Su-Yeon the answer: a vampire did it. Su-Yeon is skeptical at first, but then a fifth victim jumps from the window and her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Wanda’s explanation—that something supernatural is involved.

The Midnight Shift is a gripping mystery, overflowing with commentary about societal isolation and loneliness, the sharp knife of grief, and the effects of marginalization, perfect for readers of Cursed Bunny; Woman, Eating; and A Certain Hunger.

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

Description from Goodreads

Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Description from Goodreads

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.