Recs if you like Crossroads...
Really Short Standalone SFF Reads
Speculative (sci-fi, fantasy, horror etc.) novellas less than 200 pages long that are either standalone or read like a standalone story
Horror in < 200 pages
Horror books with a page count of 200 pages or less.
Before we started defining novellas by word count, they were defined as being any book less than 200 pages. Source: my Analysis of Short Stories & Literature professor in community college. I loved that class. But he loved James Joyce. So, ymmv, I guess.
Grief is The Thing
Books where grief is personified, given a body, a voice, or a shape, to explore how loss lives alongside us.
Feral and Hysterical: Works by Women
List of recommendations included in Sadie Hartmann's Feral and Hysterical: Mother Horror’s Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women.
Pairs with 50 States, 50 Books by Women list.
Bloody West: A Collection of Westerns Horrors
Everything under the high sun, from monsters and mayhem to hauntings and sorrow set across the hot, dry plains of the West. This collection spans from pure horror to the horror-adjacent found in both new printings and older classics.
crime: being an unreliable narrator
If being an unreliable narrator was a crime, these characters would be in trouble
indie and/or small press horror
*or gothic and generally horror-adjacent. i have not read all of these! some self-published i think as well
unconventional ghosts
strange and surprising hauntings. these ghosts defy or challenge conventions of commercial ghost stories, reimagining how memories and ancestry shape us. recommendations alway welcome!
grief is a journey
fiction books centered around characters processing grief 🦋
Scream Queens
A reading list celebrating the women who know exactly how to get under your skin! Thankful for the gurlies!!!
Motherhood: Dark & Deadly
A collection of stories that explore themes of motherhood & mother-child relationships through a darker lens.
Tags: Horror, Motherhood, Matriarch, Matriarchy, Magical Realism, Thriller
The Family Curse
Thrillers and horror books with a family setting. This list focuses on relationships between siblings, parent and child etc.
Drip Drop: Paint Drip Covers
I’m really fascinated by cover trends in publishing and this one has felt inescapable this year so I decided to make a list of them all! I feel like I personally see this most often in horror & lit fic, but I’d love to hear if you’ve seen this trend outside those genres or if there’s another trend you see!
Have you ever thought about dying?
Books where one or more characters think about taking the ultimate step, arguing for or against it, assessing the action and its consequences, or seeing it as a viable route to take.
trick or treat: short and sweet
horror books under 250 pages
Motherhood/Parent Horror
A mix of the horrors of parenthood AND parents (particularly mothers) doing absolutely everything to protect their kids.
Unhinged Moms
Motherhood and pregnancy horror . Suggestions are welcomed
Feral and Hysterical
This is a list of horror books written by women, as recommended by Sadie Hartmann (Mother Horror) in her book Feral and Hysterical. I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Feral and Hysterical because it is so much more than a list of books. There are more lists of books, but also thoughtful essays by women writers. It's worth spending some time with Feral and Hysterical.
"Women are overqualified to write fictional horror. Period." -- Sadie Hartmann
size doesn’t matter
worthwhile reads under 200(ish) pages
Dark, Weird Stuff
Twisted books that wander into some really dark places
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