The publishing year is now well underway, which means the cadence is picking up on titles everywhere. The winter lull is over, so now it’s time to dive into spring titles that’ll still send those wintry chills down your spine. This month brings everything from the latest title by a respected, mysterious Japanese author to a reprint from one of horror’s brightest to a must-read volume of nonfiction from a giant in the field.
Let’s take a look at nine horror books you won’t want to miss this March.
No Gods for Drowning by Hailey Piper – March 3
We’re starting with a reprint this month, but it’s a book that too many people missed the first time around, and now that Hailey Piper’s star has risen further into the horror sky, it’s a good time to revisit. Set in an alternate world where the gods have abandoned humanity to be devoured by wretched monsters, No Gods for Drowning combines a serial killer narrative with a dark fantasy epic, in a world that feels simultaneously familiar and entirely new. If you only know Hailey Piper from contemporary horror, you’ll want to see what fantasy inventions she has up her sleeve, because this is a whole other side of one of our finest genre writers.
Strange Buildings by Uketsu – March 3
No one else is doing fiction like Uketsu right now. The mysterious author and YouTuber has built a devoted following on the page, and with Strange Buildings, he once again returns to the mixed media style that made Strange Houses and Strange Pictures international hits. This time around, Uktesu tells the story – complete with his signature diagrams and visual aids mixed in with the prose – of eleven mysterious buildings united by one secret. What secret? That’s up to an occult-obsessed writer, and of course, the reader, to find out.
The Midnight Muse by Jo Kaplan – March 10
There are a lot of reasons to check out The Midnight Muse. Jo Kaplan is a celebrated genre writer; it’s got a great premise, and more, but I’ll be honest: I was immediately sucked in just by the phrase “mycelium-metal” in the jacket copy. Set in the woods of Oregon, where mushrooms grow in damp abundance, The Midnight Muse follows the surviving members of the metal band Queen Carrion as they go to the cabin where their former lead singer disappeared one year earlier. Amid discussions of how to carry on without their frontwoman, the band makes a shocking discovery: Their lead singer was out here chasing a muse, trying to finish her most important creative work. But what’s really in the trees, and what does the forest know about it? If you’re fascinated with the growing subgenre of Mushroom Horror, you won’t want to miss this.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus – March 10
Daniel Kraus is one of the most respected writers of horror fiction in the game right now, but this year, Kraus turns his knack for crafting works of supreme ambition and packing them with emotion into a nonfiction work. Partially Devoured is Kraus’s loving dissection of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, his favorite movie. He does this by excavating not just details about the making of the film (some of them never before published) or what’s on screen in each frame, but his own life and how the film, and Romero as a creator, helped shape his imagination. I am obsessed with horror origin stories (I do a whole podcast about it.), and this is one of the best I’ve ever heard. Horror cinephiles, this one’s an essential.
The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White – March 10
The author of Lucy Undying returns with another juicy riff on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and I cannot wait to sink my teeth into this one. The Fox and the Devil follows Abraham Van Helsing’s daughter Anneke as she sets out first for answers, then for revenge, after her famous and famously eccentric father turns up dead. Anneke always thought the elder Van Helsing’s stories of immortal blood drinkers were a madman’s fantasy, but the deeper she gets into the search for her father’s killer, the more she finds he might have been all too right. I can’t resist a Dracula riff in the first place, but White is one of our most engrossing, page-turning writers in horror right now, so I’ll definitely be digging into this one, and you should too.
You Have to Let Them Bleed by Annie Neugebauer – March 17
Annie Neubebauer has built a devoted fanbase writing shorter works like novellas and many, many short stories, and now she gets to reintroduce herself with her first-ever collection of stories and poems. From haunting descriptions of living shadows to terrifying shapeshifters and riffs on Edgar Allan Poe, the stories in this book run the gamut from the strange to the disturbing to up-all-night, all-out terror. This volume should cement Neugebauer as one of the most exciting voices in modern horror and win her plenty of new fans with its bloody, witty, unforgettable tales.
Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher – March 24
T. Kingfisher is one of the most versatile genre authors in the game right now, capable of weaving secondary world fantasy, classic horror riffs, and contemporary scares with equal fervor and grace. This March, Kingfisher goes the Southern Gothic route with Wolf Worm. Set at the end of the 19th century in North Carolina, the book follows talented scientific illustrator Sonia as she moves into the home of a reclusive scientist to illustrate his vast insect collection. But something’s not right here, and the deeper Sonia goes into the woods, the more she discovers about this particular scientist’s dark path. Combine Gothic horror with dark science and academia, and I’m always there with bells on.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca – March 24
Eric LaRocca’s novels weave immense tapestries of dread by exploring with unflinching wonder the darkest parts of us all, and with Wretch, LaRocca seems poised to deliver grief horror as you’ve never read before. The story of Simeon, a grieving widower in search of any kind of relief, the book follows what happens when this man, at his lowest, joins a secretive support group known as “The Wretches.” There, he hopes to make a deal with a mysterious man named Porcelain Khaw that will grant him a moment of closure, for a price. It’s the latest in a growing strand of delicate, empathetic descents into depravity from LaRocca, so fans of truly dark horror take note.
This’ll Make Things a Little Easier by Attila Verse – March 24
Attila Veres established himself as one of the most inventive, audacious horror authors of the 2020s with his first collection, The Black Maybe. Now, with his second, he’s set to expand his fan base with another group of scary stories that’ll take you from the cosmic to the just-plain-strange. Covering everything from a traveling salesman getting a peek into an alternate dimension to an author who finds their book mangled and transformed by a dark translation, the stories in This’ll Make Things a Little Easier will linger long after you’ve turned off the lights.