June Horror Novels to Kickstart Your Summer Scares

Everyone has different reactions when suddenly, all across the world, seven doors open up portals to another world. It’s a world that seems like a beautiful paradise. But what’s the catch? For twin sisters Ayanna and Olivia, the world beyond means different things, but for each, it offers a chance for exploration. Then one of the sisters goes missing, and it soon becomes clear that the world beyond is filled with danger.

Is there anything creepier than a mysterious house with an unfathomable floor plan? When a writer purchases this house, he quickly realizes there are strange “dead spaces” between the walls. Do these spaces have something to do with the strange disappearance of the previous owner? Are they dangerous? Are they really there at all? Those are the questions at the heart of this eerie new novel from Uketsu, the author of Strange Pictures.

In this Indigenous YA horror novel set in the 1980s, the Dogrib and Chipewyan have agreed upon a peace treaty. Lawson and his family are on the Dogrib side, doing their best to honor “the Treaty” with the Cranes, a neighboring Chipewyan family. But that agreement doesn’t mean there is no ill will between the families. Especially now that one of the Cranes is following the orders of an evil spirit who wants nothing more than blood and war.

This dark vampire novel from the author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue traverses centuries and continents to tell the story of three different women. In Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532, Maria is offered a choice that would give her power beyond anything afforded to women in her time. In London, 1827, Charlotte feels like an outsider in London society, and then she meets a widow who changes everything. Then, in Boston, 2019, Alice is looking for a fresh start in college, but her grief haunts her.

For Valla, her betrothal to the mysterious Count Leonid is a chance to escape her dull village life. There’s only one catch. She’ll have to pass through the deadly Gottyar Wood, where supernatural forces and evil creatures lurk in every dark shadow. Many don’t make it out of the forest alive. Little does Valla know that the forest is only where the horrors begin. What waits beyond them is far, far worse.

Ecstasy is a dark reimagining of Euripides’ The Bacchae. Lena has spent years living under the thumb of her controlling husband, living like a bird in a cage amongst the wealthy elite. Now that her husband is dead, all she wants to do is break free. The women living in tents on the beach of Agape seem to be calling to her, and Lena is drawn to their carefree lifestyle. But an ancient God is stirring on the beach, calling to the village’s women, awakening dark desires in all of them.

Ella Winters was once the scream queen after she starred as the final girl in the cult-classic slasher Grad Night. But after the movie’s premiere, Ella disappeared from Hollywood for reasons she and her castmates refuse to explain. Now, 20 years later, Ella is ready for a comeback, and it all starts with the cast of Grad Night filming a reunion documentary in a cabin in rural Tennessee. But when each of the actors meets a fate similar to that of their characters in the film, Ella realizes someone knows what they’ve been hiding.