Horror

Marcus Kliewer's The Caretaker follows Macy Mullins, a broke young woman who takes a Craigslist caretaking job at a remote Oregon house and discovers its unsettling rules are chillingly real. This spoiler-free review weighs Kliewer's sharp voice, analog-horror atmosphere, and OCD-coded dread against a baggy middle and an ending some readers will find frustratingly ambiguous.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker is a slow-burn horror novel blending samurai history and Japanese myth. A Gothic horror novel where a grieving present-day fugitive and a 19th-century samurai's daughter discover each other through a door that should not exist, with Kylie Lee Baker's dark prose and Japanese mythology holding the whole haunted house together.

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher blends Victorian gothic horror with real entomology in a gripping 1899 North Carolina setting. With a stubborn scientific illustrator, a rotting manor, and body horror rooted in genuine parasitology, this is literary gothic at its best.

Innamorata by Ava Reid is the dark, decadent first entry in the House of Teeth duology — a gothic fantasy about forbidden love, ancient necromancy, and a mute heroine whose silence is her sharpest weapon. A spoiler-free review of the most atmospheric fantasy novel of 2026.

You Did Nothing Wrong by C.G. Drews is a relentless psychological horror about a mother, her autistic son, and a crumbling Victorian house that may be alive. A gothic masterclass from the NYT bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In.