7 Dark New Reads to Bring in Autumn

Sawkill Girls, by Claire Legrand
Girl-gang horror stories (and especially LGBTQ+ girl-gang stories) are things we’d like to see more of in the world, and Sawkill Girls is a fine specimen of this rare breed. The titular girls are Marion, Zoey, and Val, each different and each broken in their own ways. Their stories converge on Sawkill Rock, a picture-perfect island haunted by stories of a monster and a decades-long list of disappeared girls. As they come to know themselves and each other, this trio will also uncover that the boogeyman of legend may in fact be very, very real.

The Echo Room, by Parker Peevyhouse
The nightmare starts on the first page of The Echo Room, when Rett Ward wakes up alone in a locked room with somebody else’s blood on his jumpsuit. If you can silence your internal screaming long enough to keep turning the pages, you’ll fall deep into a psychological thriller that will keep you up at night. Rett may not know where he is or why, but he’s not alone. A girl named Bryn is trapped inside, too, and the clues they pick up may help them escape—if they don’t mind facing what’s on the other side of the door.

Give the Dark My Love, by Beth Revis
Girls like Nedra Brysstain don’t usually get the kind of education she’s about to receive. Having earned a scholarship to Yugen Academy, Nedra has left behind her rural village and is brushing elbows with much wealthier classmates as they learn the skills of medicinal alchemy. At the same time, a deadly plague is ravaging the towns and people from which Nedra came. Desperate to find a cure, she’s willing to do just about anything, including delve into the verboten art of necromancy.

Shadow of the Fox, by Julie Kagawa
There are few things darker or more metal than a quest to summon a dragon god. The great Kami Dragon grants one wish every thousand years to the person who holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers. As the deadline nears once again, the search for the missing pieces of the scroll intensifies throughout Iwagoto, even as fate brings together the paths of Tatsumi the samurai and Yumeko, raised by monks and wielder of a power all her own. The result is an action-packed swirl of Japanese lore and striking fantasy, replete with shapeshifters, demons, and, of course, that dragon.

Not Even Bones, by Rebecca Schaeffer
The back cover says Dexter meets This Savage Song, and you say, “Gimme.” This horror story is filled with monsters, including Nita, a supernatural being who, along with her mother, traffics in the sale of supernatural bodies and body parts on the black market. But when her mom brings home a live specimen for Nita to dissect, she decides to take a stand and save the intended victim. The problem? She winds up in his place, kidnapped, caged, and in need of an escape plan.

The Good Demon, by Jimmy Cajoleas
Exorcism stories tend to play out in a certain way: the possessed person is freed from the demon roiling inside them and everyone lives happily ever after. But what if the demon isn’t evil? What if the demon’s your best friend? That’s the situation for Clare, whose recent exorcism has left her miserable and empty. All she wants now is to find a way to retrieve Her, the demon who lived inside of her for eight years. Clare’s quest crackles on the page, and her desperate efforts will uncover a whole host of occult secrets in her small southern town.

Sadie, by Courtney Summers
Fans of the true-crime podcast bonanza will fall head over heels for this grim mystery. Told in narratives alternating between the first-person account of the titular Sadie and a podcast called The Girls, the story follows Sadie’s search for the man who killed her little sister. Sadie is on the hunt for justice, and podcast producer West McCray is on the hunt for Sadie, who has gone missing somewhere along the way. It’s compelling and anxiety-inducing at every step.