Here’s the full list of horror titles heading your way in June!
Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.
June 2
Muñeca — Cynthia Gómez (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic. Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why? As feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghost— ones she hoped would stay gone forever.
Phoning Faust — Sophie Mutiara Nova (Ninestar Press)
Queer mixed Indonesian college student Dian Faust attempts to call the suicide hotline only to dial the wrong number, her finger slipping and typing in six three times (the mark of the Devil). The mysterious voice on the other end of the line is revealed to be a charming scam caller named Memphis with a penchant for chattiness, trapped in a dingy bus stop bathroom, wanting to learn a concerning amount about the lonely Dian’s life. But this scam caller is more than just a Mr. Robot hacker wannabe—a sinister presence lurks in the pixels on Dian’s laptop screen in the shadows of her apartment. The Devil themself has come to collect Dian’s soul, and “Memphis” is actually Mephistopheles—Hell’s foremost golden-tongued agent and notorious liar. In this loose retelling of Goethe’s Faust, will Dian save her soul before time runs out—or will she fall prey to the renowned storytelling deception of the infamous Mephistopheles?
June 9
Our Sister’s Keeper — Jasmine Holmes (Bindery Books)
No town is perfect, but East Cobb comes close. It’s a wealthy all-Black Free Town—untouched by white oppression—where ambitious Thea Elliot and her husband plan to make good on their big dreams. Little do they know that the idyllic town teems with ghoulish, walking nightmares… that only the women can see. Marah knows the groanings well. She is one of the carriers—women with the ability to pull traumatic memories from men. Populated by men entirely freed of their pain, East Cobb has flourished, even as the remnants of their memories haunt the town’s women. When an unexpected death drives Marah to discover more about her own power, Thea’s and Marah’s worlds collide. The sisters must confront the rotten core at the heart of East Cobb’s prosperity and choose what—and who—will survive the reckoning.
Headlights — CJ Leede (Tor Nightfire)
Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it’s happening again. Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they’ve allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue. Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along—before he and the people he loves become the next victims.
It Came from Neverland — Cynthia Pelayo (Crooked Lane Books)
1914, Wendy Darling works by day as a school teacher, and by night, she assists soldiers who have returned home from the Western Front. There is one mysterious patient who, despite all the care they’ve given him, is in a deep sleep, unable to wake up. One night, when he murmurs the words “Peter Pan,” Wendy is thrown back to a darker time, one that she wishes she could forget. When one of her students goes missing, it brings back memories of when children went missing and were later found murdered in London many years ago. Wendy is convinced that Peter Pan, the entity that she believes killed those children, is back. She and her brothers had a close encounter with Peter Pan, after all. But her brothers only remember Peter Pan and Neverland as a fantasy of childhood games. When another child goes missing and signs start to point to Wendy, Scotland Yard digs into old reports, finding that Wendy knew the names of all the children who had been killed. As Wendy tries to prove her innocence, she also has to find a way to stop Peter Pan once and for all.
The Way It Haunted Him — Laura R. Samotin (Titan Books)
Michael Stein arrives at the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies battered and broken, blaming himself for the tragic accident that took his boyfriend’s life. He is haunted by his guilt and grief, but is determined to repent by completing his boyfriend’s research into demonic entities. But instead of being welcomed by the archivist, Michael is met by Jacob Schechter—the archivist’s enigmatic, brooding grandson, who has inherited the Institute after his grandfather’s death. As Michael explores the archive, delving into cryptic texts and whispered histories, shadows from the past begin to seep into the present. Tormented by demons both real and imagined, Michael’s grief warps into something far darker—an intoxicating, yet increasingly toxic obsession with Jacob, whose own secrets threaten to destroy them both. Now, Michael must confront the terrible truth behind his boyfriend’s death—and his obsession with Jacob—before the darkness they awaken in each other claims more than just their love, and consumes them entirely.
Vervain Hollow — Catriona Silvey (Union Square & Co.)
Two years ago, Laura was in a cult. But when the sprawling house in the hollow burned down with Vervain, their strikingly handsome and magnetic leader, trapped inside, Laura had nowhere to go but home. Brokenhearted, she finds herself longing for their lost leader—despite the trauma of that strange and terrifying year, she knows the power he promised her was real. But when her estranged friend, Aliyah, calls to tell her that Daniel, one of the other acolytes, has been lured back to the hollow by a message from Vervain, Laura only hears one thing: He’s still there. As Laura and Aliyah venture back to the house of their nightmares to find the truth, Laura soon realizes that not everything she remembers can be trusted—and that the darkness will do anything to get her back.
June 23
Tillinghast — Clare Cavenagh (Viking)
Stutley Tillinghast lives a solitary life, ostensibly as the minister of a remote rural parish in Rhode Island. For many decades now, what little human contact he’s allowed himself has been brief, frenzied and bloody, and has always ended in a shallow grave in his cellar. There’s a name for what he is, but he prefers not to use it: it is simple enough that he has his needs, and that when they become unbearable, he fulfils them. In his long and lonely life, he has met only one other like him—the woman he still yearns for, the one who made him what he is. Then a girl arrives, searching for him. She has his last name, and bears an uncanny resemblance to that woman, awakening memories Tillinghast had long suppressed; the connection he feels for her is immediate and overwhelming. She’s also sick, very sick, with symptoms Tillinghast recognizes all too well… and only he knows how to cure her.
Little Wild — Laura Evans (Henry Holt and Co.)
Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer on the Continent, a flying visit before she leaves for university at Oxford. Only Margaret, longtime ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers. Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into autumn and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on the soles of her feet and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her—perhaps the very one that led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always crave—but at what cost?
June 30
Bad Things Happen Here — Mark Morris (Flame Tree Press)
In 2004 a group of six students, who have newly arrived at university and quickly become friends, are beset by supernatural forces, which seem to centre around a 5th floor room in an otherwise innocuous student hall of residence. So insidious and terrifying is their ordeal that one of the six commits suicide, an act which drives an irreparable wedge between the rest. Twenty years later, the remaining five friends are all living very different lives. Hannah Prentice is a divorcee with two children, the youngest of whom is being badly bullied at school, and a mother who is showing the first signs of dementia; Jess Maple is a professional artist, who is just about to break into the big time; Steve Lazenby is a successful architect, whose eight-year-old daughter is suffering from delusions and nightmares; Max Bradshaw is a self-employed plumber, happily married with three children, whose fourteen-year-old son has fallen in with the wrong crowd; and Michael Vance, bohemian and charismatic at university, is now a drug-addicted vagrant, who harbours a terrible secret… Although the five friends have not been in contact for almost two decades, they are gradually drawn back together when their lives begin to fall apart. What happened to them twenty years ago seems to be seeping back into the present, affecting not just them this time, but their children, their partners, their loved ones. As the terrifying visions, the violence and the madness escalate, they must mobilise forces and once again confront the horror in Room 55.
The Siren of Groves Peak — Glenn Rolfe (Flame Tree Press)
Groves Peak, Maine is home to a dark secret. The successful lobstering community is ready for summer, but a murder at sea changes everything. People are dying in the small coastal town, and the lobstermen are on edge. Only one man knows the truth. His closet of skeletons is about to open, and no one is safe. Not even his daughter or her best friend. As a supernatural fury, homegrown dangers, and buried secrets coalesce into a series of real-life nightmares, friendships are tested, and heroes will fall. The Siren of Groves Peak reveals the true monsters in us all.
