Recs if you like True Crime...

are you sick of being recommended stephen king when you ask for a horror novel? have you picked up a book expected to be scared, but the scariest thing about it was a woman being needlessly tormented and gaslit? have you read 4627473 books about a man in a haunted house and need something different?

if so, this list is for you :)

a masterlist of horror by anyone who isn't a straight cis white man, started in 2022 and brought to pb in 2026.

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.

Tier 4 of the Disturbing Novel iceberg, inspired by the disturbing movie iceberg.

This Tier contains significant gore, taboo topics, and is not for the faint of heart.

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

List of horror books (mostly 2000-2023) compiled by Sadie Hartmann, aka Mother Horror.