Happy 2022 and happy horror reading!
Here's the roundup of anticipated horror releases for January 2022.
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Publication date: January 6th, 2022
Fascism didn't die in 1945. Its grave was only temporary. Rising again, this undead ideology shambles into the present, gathering power and spreading destruction wherever it goes.
This monster stalks the pages of ANTIFA SPLATTERPUNK, in which sixteen horror writers explore fascism's many terrors: police wielding strange bioweapons against the public, white supremacists annihilating their enemies through dark magic, and TV personalities vilifying all who defy the rising fascist tide.
But these stories are resistance: Nazi-killing demons, Confederate-slaying witches, and everyday people punching fascists in the teeth. Among the gore is a glimmer of hope that one day this monster will return to its grave and never rise again.
As Eliza delves deeper into Malcolm’s troubling history, the dark secrets she unearths gain a frightening power. Has she married a man or a monster? For Eliza, uncovering the truth will either save her or destroy her.
Young Thomas Cavanaugh's life changes the morning he sees a fairy in his mother's garden. When it appears in his room later, he realizes his parents are wrong⎯the fairy is real, all too real. One night the fairy takes Thomas into a cornfield on his family's Northwest Missouri farm to face the Empty⎯an enemy he can't understand, and barely survives. Haunted by the horror he encountered in the corn, Thomas spends time in a mental hospital where he meets Jillian, a girl who seems oddly familiar, and Bobby, a troubled boy. Later, as a young adult flitting from relationship-to-relationship, dead-end job-to-dead-end job, he discovers he was right. He knows Jillian, and Bobby is dangerous.
As Bobby summons the entity from the corn to rid himself of his lifelong role as victim, and Jillian begs Thomas to help her stop him. Admitting that she is the fairie indeed, she takes him to her world so Thomas can witness the destruction wrought by the Empty. Finally convinced that he is the only one to stand between the Empty and the destruction of all he cares for, Thomas helps Jillian to fight Bobby and the ancient evil he has called. Are they too late to save the people they love?
The Girl in the Corn is a rural horror novel for fans of Joe Hill and Jonathan Maberry.
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Publication date: January 11th, 2022
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
A unique blend of espionage thrills and Lovecraftian horror, Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross's Laundry Files continues with Quantum of Nightmares.It’s a brave new Britain under the New Management. The avuncular Prime Minister is an ancient eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.
Hyperorganized and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she’s in charge of the Bigge Corporation—just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago.
Wendy Deere’s transhuman abilities have gotten her through many a scrape. Now she’s gainfully employed investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn’t again get entangled with Eve Starkey’s bohemian brother Imp and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.
Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she’s pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorized superheroes. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.
Amanda Sullivan is the HR manager of a minor grocery chain, much oppressed by her glossy blonde boss—who is cooking up an appalling, extralegal scheme literally involving human flesh.
All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results...
Metiza Blood by V. Castro
Publication date: January 18th, 2022
From the lauded author of The Queen of the Cicadas (which picked up starred reviews from PW, Kirkus and Booklist who called her "a dynamic and innovative voice") comes a short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desire and visions focused on the Chicana experience. V.Castro weaves urban legend, folklore, life experience and heartache in this personal journey beginning in south Texas: a bar where a devil dances the night away; a street fight in a neighborhood that may not have been a fight after all; a vengeful chola at the beginning of the apocalypse; mind swapping in the not so far future; satan who falls and finds herself in a brothel in Amsterdam; the keys to Mictlan given to a woman after she dies during a pandemic. The collection finishes with two longer tales: The Final Porn Star is a twist on the final girl trope and slasher, with a creature from Mexican folklore; and Truck Stop is an erotic horror romance with two hearts: a video store and a truck stopSuch A Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester
Publication date: January 18th, 2022
Matt Kearns has two choices: fight or hide. The creature in the orchard took the rest. Three days ago, he arrived at his favorite place in the world, a remote shack in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The plan was to mourn his father’s death and figure out his life. Now he's fighting for it. An invisible creature has him trapped. Every time Matt tries to flee, he’s dragged backwards by an unseen force. Alone and with no hope of rescue, Matt must escape the Puller's reach. But how do you free yourself from something you cannot see?
The Wakening by JG Faherty
Publication date: January 18th, 2022
A team of paranormal investigators, a priest and a defrocked priest with a dark secret join forces to combat of a vengeful ancient demon, and the evil spreading throughout a small New York town.Fifty years ago, Father Leo Bonaventura, a young exorcist, cast a demon out from a young boy in Central America. The demon, Asmodeus, vowed revenge. Now the demon has returned, in the same town where Bonaventura is a retired priest nearing the end of his life. In a series of not-so-coincidental events, the possession of a young girl brings together an unlikely group of people, all of whom are linked in their pasts in some way: A group of paranormal investigators, including twin psychics. Robert Lockhart, a defrocked priest with a dark secret that only the twins know. A father whose dead wife was a college girlfriend of Robert’s and once conjured an evil spirit with him through a Ouiji board. Now they must all join forces and help Father Bonaventura rid the town not only of Asmodeus, but also the plague of poltergeists that have followed the demon into our world.
Road of Bones by Christopher Golden
Publication date: January 25th, 2022
Astunning supernatural thriller set in Siberia, where a film crew is covering an elusive ghost story about the Kolyma Highway, a road built on top of the bones of prisoners of Stalin's gulag.Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Under Stalin, at least eighty Soviet gulags were built along the route to supply the USSR with a readily available workforce, and over time hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the midst of their labors. Their bodies were buried where they fell, plowed under the permafrost, underneath the road.
Felix Teigland, or "Teig," is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he's stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious 9-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.
A malignant, animistic shaman and the forest spirits he commands pursues them as they flee the abandoned town and barrel across miles of deserted permafrost. As the chase continues along this road paved with the suffering of angry ghosts, what form will the echoes of their anguish take? Teig and the others will have to find the answers if they want to survive the Road of Bones