Historical Horror Fiction

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

“Willowbrook” follows a dedicated nurse named Margaret Holloway, whose world is irreversibly transformed by a series of horrifying events at Willowbrook Sanitarium. As she confronts systemic corruption and brutal abuses hidden behind a polished façade, Margaret embarks on a journey that blurs the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, and between secrets and justice.

Uncover the secret annals of untold history in these eighteen medieval manuscripts. Each tortured scribe will bring you face to face with ancient horrors lurking in cursed castles, wild woodlands, haunted hamlets, and mysterious monasteries. Including a lineup of authors both established and emerging, HOWL Society Press presents the first-ever anthology of historical horror from the medieval period, fittingly introduced by the writer who arguably started it all: Christopher Buehlman, author of the medieval horror epic Between Two Fires.

Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of four centuries of witches - a family given to poetry and incest, murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being called Lasher who haunts the Mayfair women. Moving in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and the France of Louis XIV, from the coffee plantations of Port-au-Prince to Civil War New Orleans and back to today, Anne Rice has spun a mesmerizing tale.

From electrifying horror author Nick Cutter comes a haunting new novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Stephen King's It, in which a trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven. Shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous.

One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family's only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims' handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family's darkest secrets before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

(1919) On his return from fighting the war in Europe, Eryk Laska finds Floodwood Station, Ohio, isn't the same quiet coal-mining town he left. Not only has an underhanded contender become a threat to his relationship with the love of his life, Eryk soon finds himself a prime suspect in one of the town’s growing number of grisly deaths.

He came to conquer the wilderness. He found something wilder. Before he was president, Theodore Roosevelt was a hunter, explorer, and relentless force of nature. But nothing in his journals — or his nightmares — prepared him for what he would find in the darkest corners of the American frontier. Bigfoot – Teddy Roosevelt is a ferocious blend of historical fiction and horror, plunging you into an untamed landscape where man is not the apex predator. Roosevelt’s hunting expedition starts with grandeur and bravado — but turns into a desperate fight for survival when his party is ...

Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor", and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of - a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his 11th life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August", she says. "I need to send a message". This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

It is 1831 when eight-year-old Aurelia Vennaway finds a naked baby girl abandoned in the snow on the grounds of her aristocratic family's magnificent mansion. Her parents are horrified that she has brought a bastard foundling into the house, but Aurelia convinces them to keep the baby, whom she names Amy Snow. Amy is brought up as a second-class citizen, but she and Aurelia are as close as sisters. When Aurelia dies at the age of 23, she leaves Amy 10 pounds. But Aurelia also left her much more.

In this dazzling debut, Taylor M. Polites crafts a Southern gothic novel that mines classic literary archetypes while shaping them in new ways. Set in Reconstruction-era Alabama, The Rebel Wife opens with Augusta Branson losing her husband to a terrible blood fever. Now she and her son must fend for themselves in a community being destroyed by violence.

Deep within the cold, primordial forest and the Algonquin people's consciousness lives the Wendigo: a towering, emaciated being with translucent skin draped over its skeletal frame like a veil of mortality. Its hollow eyes gleam like fiery coals, emanating a malevolent crimson glow that mirrors its unquenchable craving for human flesh. An extraterrestrial shifter, stranded on our planet millennia ago, assumes the forms of not only humans but also hideous creatures in order to survive. The story of the Wendigo spans millennia, entwining native folklore with modern-day mysteries.

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life: Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth remains an ever-present pain.

Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it - not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.

Deep within the shadows of Durango, Colorado, lies a dark and ancient power that threatens to consume everything in its path. Nancy Walker knows this all too well, as the sinister force seems to follow her every move, putting her and everyone she loves in grave danger. As a woman with unique and unsettling abilities, Nancy has always struggled to find a place where she belongs. But when she and her mother arrive in Durango, something about the town feels like home, like she might finally find some peace. But her hopes are shattered when her best friend, Emilia, is brutally murdered. As ...

Discover a haunting Victorian Gothic tale where family secrets, supernatural terror, and the unbreakable bond between sisters collide in the wild moors of Northumberland... When desperate poverty forces Eliza Harrow to accept a mysterious inheritance from her estranged uncle, she believes her prayers have been answered. Withering House—a remote Gothic manor in the windswept Northumberland countryside—promises refuge from her precarious existence in Victorian London. But the house harbors secrets that stretch back three centuries. Local villagers speak in whispers of lights in empty ...

Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor", and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of: a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.