Top Ten Tuesday; Most Anticipated Horror & Paranormal Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2026

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and today's topic is most anticipated horror and paranormal books releasing in the second half of 2026.

Here's my ten spooky picks.

The Brides by Charlotte Cross

Description from Goodreads

Before Dracula, there were The Brides. . .

1903. Sir John Seward, survivor of Count Dracula’s murderous campaign ten years before, takes up a post as a psychiatric doctor at an Oxford public asylum. There, a new patient arrives whose traumatic experiences resurrect horrors John has spent a decade trying to forget.

1884. Mafalda Lowell journeys from London to Budapest to care for her recently widowed aunt Reka. She uncovers the chilling truth about her uncle’s death, and writes to her secret love Lucy North for comfort. Chaperoned by former schoolfriend Eliza and lady’s maid Alice, Lucy travels across the continent to be with her beloved.

Only Alice, beset by nightmares and terrifying visions, notices the strange black-clad man who seems to follow them wherever they go. When Eliza is struck down with a mysterious wasting illness, her doctor orders her to take the healing waters of Transylvania, a journey with devastating consequences.

There was meant to be four . . .

A dual timeline novel, told through letters, diary entries, psychiatric reports, that places women at the centre of literature's most famous vampire story.

A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorn

Description from Goodreads

One deal with the devil makes a fool. Two? A villain...

A year ago, Elle made a deal with the devil to save her sister. Now, they live on a desolate spit of land beyond Halifax harbor. Elle, as lighthouse keeper, steers unsuspecting sailors to their destruction; those are the terms of her bargain. Liney need never know the cost. Her safety is worth every drop of blood.

But a sinner’s pact is not so simple. When the devil returns, demanding more – more shipwrecks, no survivors – Elle knows what she must do to keep Liney safe...

Another ship. Another crew killed in the devil’s name.

Then a woman washes ashore. Is she a soul to be sacrificed, or part of a darker design? As Liney and the stranger grow closer, Elle faces an impossible choice: kill, and break Liney’s heart, or forfeit her own soul.

Danger arises from all sides: the merciless sea, ruthless men on the mainland, and the infernal bargain itself…

Souls and sisterhood, fate and fire – what must be sacrificed for the devil to get his due?

We Were Never Here by Sophia Hannan

Description from Goodreads

The remaining members of a ghost hunting show return to the haunted manor that may have killed their friend in this atmospheric, contemporary gothic debut perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting and Delicious Monsters.

In July, Georgia Perry and Jules Park—secret girlfriends, covert art thieves, and cohosts of a popular YouTube ghost hunting show—step into a haunted house to steal a priceless painting. A few short hours later, there’s a knife in Jules’s chest and Georgia is waking up in a pool of blood with no painting and no memory of how she got there.

Now it’s October, and Georgia is underwater. She hasn’t been to class in weeks, and she’s avoiding her old crew—and only friends—like the plague. But when the three remaining thieves get a call from the man who paid a hefty sum to keep them out of jail, demanding that they return to finish the job, Georgia has no choice but to return to her old life.

As the estranged friends scramble to steal the painting with no cover story and no leader, they quickly realize that something is very, very wrong, and it’s not just the suffocating memory of Jules or the prying eyes of their viewers. Between the strange shadows that begin to trail them and the nightmares plaguing Georgia’s sleep, only one thing is certain: something followed them home from De Lys manor, and it will do anything to keep them from going back.

She Haunts Me Still by De Elizabeth

Description from Goodreads

These violent delights have violent ends.

After surviving a shadowed childhood, Mallory Webb is ready to start fresh as a theater major at her mother’s alma mater, a sanitarium turned liberal arts university in Rhode Island. Landing the lead role in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet feels like a dream—until the blood-soaked wraith that caused her mother’s death resurfaces after years of quiet. With nothing to go on but cryptic symbols in an old college notebook, Mallory hopes the reason behind her mother’s haunting lies somewhere on campus, and resolves to find answers before she meets the same fate.

She’s surprised to make an unexpected ally in Ezra Pierce, the magnetic fourth year directing the play, and takes solace in their undeniable chemistry. But Ezra is a master secret keeper, and it’s clear he knows more than he’s letting on about Saskia Garin, Mallory’s elusive understudy whose past eerily mirrors her own.

When an ancient, bloodthirsty evil calls to collect a bargain that dates back to the New England vampire panic, Mallory, Ezra, and Saskia will have to untangle the tragic ways in which their histories are linked—and face the devastating consequences of their own star-crossed love story.

Natural Selection by Clare Edge

Description from Goodreads

Three girls bond in unsettling ways when a grizzly starts picking off known abusers in their secluded mountain town in this darkly funny, deeply feminist novel for fans of books like The Honeys and Wilder Girls.

When it comes to boys and bears, always choose the bear.

The girls of Riverside are raised to grin and bear it. Until three

of them can’t anymore.

Megan Lawless (aka Outlaw): Riverside born and raised. Lettered in volleyball, basketball, and track. HATES Kevin Johnson, but tolerates him for her best friend, Megan.

Megan Deloria: Outlaw’s ride or die. Riverside royalty and soon to be valedictorian. Shoo-in for the homecoming crown alongside her boyfriend, Kevin.

Meghan Bach (aka Bee): Moved to Riverside last year. Still the “new girl.” Pulls tarot cards daily. Just wants to forget what happened last summer at that party with Kevin.

And then there’s Kevin Johnson: Riverside’s Golden Boy. Only scared of two things—the dark and bears. Soon, he’ll be scared of three more.

Because Megan, Megan, and Meghan are done with Kevin, and they’re about to teach everyone in their tiny rural town the new natural order: Predator, meet prey.

Scorpion Deep by C. G. Drews

Description from Goodreads

CG Drews, New York Times-bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In and Hazelthorn, weaves a disturbing and intoxicating siren-call in Scorpion Deep, about a lonely boy who accidentally awakens an obsessive eldritch sea god.

The only thing Jonathan Covey wants from the gloomy, moldering isle of Kelcarrow is to leave it. Summer is ending, and his friends are looking forward to college on the mainland, unaware that Jonathan was not accepted to join them. He'll be left behind with nothing but the ocean's haunts and a rising dread of being abandoned.

In an act of wild desperation, Jonathan pays a tithe to Scorpion Deep, an eldritch sea god who many of the locals have dismissed as myth. He wants to forget the past, he wants to follow his friends, and most of all he wants to finally escape.

To his shock and horror, the ritual works—Scorpion Deep awakens. And despite his terror, Jonathan can't help but feel drawn toward the ageless entity that seems just as mutually obsessed with him. As scales start growing down his spine and Scorpion Deep's adoration of him turns bloody, Jonathan realizes the only way to end the nightmare is to destroy the monster one way or another.

But once a god has awoken, the only way to be free is to pay a price of blood.

Out Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

Description from Goodreads

There is something haunting Nuhad's childhood home in Haifa. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have been known to disappear entirely in its walls without a trace.

Our Cut of Salt is an unflinching, sinister and moving take on the haunted house novel, from a bold new Palestinian voice. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians and The Haunting of Hill House.

Although Nuhad has not returned to her home since the Nakba in 1948, she always held a place for the house in her heart. And, in return, the house did the same for her.

After Nuhad passes away, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother's home in Haifa after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina's mother, Haifa-named for the city that was lost to their family-reluctantly agrees to her trip, despite her omnipresent anxiety.

When a long-buried spirit of the past begins to haunt both dreams and waking life, Marina develops breathing problems that cause her to feel as if she is drowning on dry land. Despite Nuhad's warnings, Haifa rushes to help her daughter. As the three women converge in their ancestral haunted home, they must learn what the price of the past truly is.

Off the Reservation by Stephen Graham Jones

Description from Goodreads

Set five years after the events of The Only Good Indians, Nate Yellow Tail joins a ragtag group to repatriate the bones of a Blackfeet boy from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Set five years after the massacres on the Blackfeet reservation, Nate Yellow Tail is one of the two survivors of the deadly revenge murders of author Stephen Graham Jones’s breakout bestseller, The Only Good Indians. Listless at twenty and looking for meaning, Nate finds himself in the hospital after a terrible accident that should’ve killed him, that nearly killed his best friend who is hanging onto life in a room a few doors down. His life is out of balance, so when he is given the chance to set a wrong and set it upright, Nate steps up, again. This time it’s into a camper van that is almost as run down as his broken body, filled with four older Blackfeet who are sharing their vision quest with Nate to find the bones of the lone Blackfeet boy who died at the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and repatriate them home. The problem is, when they get the bones, something comes back with them.

Jones has crafted another American Indian novel for our times, shining the light on the dark corners of this country’s history while also showing the desperate choices people make when they’re put up against the wall. With his beloved mix of humor and dread, Jones’s companion to The Only Good Indians is a story that will haunt you.

Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick

Description from Goodreads

A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before

Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel and S. T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice

The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.

 A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.

Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web. 

The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first.

Milk Teeth by Caitlin Starling

Description from Goodreads

From the bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence comes a new, genre-bending supernatural horror about a vampire broodmother fighting against her own monstrous descent.

Beatrice is a a vampire responsible for nursing newly made fledglings through the first years of their unlife. She nests in an abandoned, isolated warren of office space beneath her patron's skyscraper, raising two fractious Gorgeous—once a heartthrob, now to all appearances a living corpse—who longs for the return of the lover who made him immortal with all the fervor of a rebellious teen, and Fortunata, the scion of Beatrice's mistress, alien and ambitious in her desires.

But when Beatrice decides to take on a third fledgling, the product of an attempted siring gone wrong, teetering between vampiric purity and ghoulish depravity, Beatrice finds herself strained to breaking between the societal and physical demands of her position, her own ravenous hunger, and an obsessive need to discover what’s happening to her—because her body is changing too, transforming her into something even more monstrous. She begins to crave the taste of flesh, something anathema to all vampires, and to swing between desperate hunger and vicious power.

Desperate to master herself once more, Beatrice courts a mortal OBGYN who might be able to unravel the secrets of her unnatural anatomy. But soon their connection threatens the secrecy of her vampiric coven as well as the safety and development of her dependent nurslings… and the humans they stand to slaughter if left to their own devices.