Vibe: A slow-burn small-town supernatural horror about a haunted house that's just been turned into the local funeral home.

In the dying town of Oak Hollow, Ohio, a long-notorious haunted house is converted into a funeral home just as the town's fortunes worsen. Told through alternating perspectives — a recluse, a grieving family, a hoarder, an abandoned child — the novel builds dread around grief and decay as much as anything overtly supernatural.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Domestic violence, dementia, grief, psychological distress, references to child neglect.

Vibe: A grief-soaked, gory mystery following a crime-scene cleaner who can't tell anymore what's real and what's the Hungry Ghost Festival catching up with her.

Cora Zeng cleans up after violent deaths in Chinatown for a living, still reeling from her sister's murder and the killer's parting slur: "bat eater." As she keeps finding dead bats at crime scenes tied to East Asian victims, and the Hungry Ghost Festival closes in, the line between anti-Asian violence, grief hallucination, and something genuinely supernatural blurs.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Graphic violence and gore, anti-Asian racism/hate violence, animal death, death of a sibling, psychological distress.

Vibe: Apocalyptic vampire-child horror that's really a gutting story about what parents will do for their kids.

A mysterious illness kills every child on Earth overnight — until they start coming back, animated and "alive" again as long as they're given blood. The novel follows several families forced to decide how far they'll go to keep their undead children fed, as society collapses around the impossible bargain.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Child death, body horror, animal death (a pet), violence, themes of parental grief and moral compromise.