Best horror fiction of 2021 to read late at night this Halloween

Halloween is back to haunt us, and in honour of spooky season, there’s nothing better than quivering under a blanket with a ghost story. 

To deliver your dose of literary chills, we’ve put together a curation of the best horror fiction hot off the press this year. From mind-bendingly twisted fairytales to surreal quests for vengeance to ecological horror, these are the late-night thrillers to read in 2021.

Tales from the Hinterland, Melissa Albert

Twisted fairytales never get old, and Melissa Albert’s are among the most deliciously depraved we’ve read yet. From the author of the bestselling The Hazel Wood series this year comes a round dozen exquisitely illustrated fairytales.

Death is a lead character in many of these grisly tales, sharing the spotlight with grotesque sacrifice and unthinkable savagery. With an all-female protagonist cast, it’s also a tome dedicated to women – daughters and sisters armed with sharp wits and iron will in a brutal world.

In ‘The Sea Cellar’, a daughter is sold to a mysterious house into which dozens of brides have already vanished; her younger sister sets out on a frightening quest to find out the truth of her fate.

‘The Clockwork Bride’ is an eerie tale of two children who get the chance to play in a magical toyshop – but must then pay a hidden price for it. Meanwhile, ‘Death and the Woodwife’ features a princess whom Death’s heir is set on wooing – and who must outfox him to free herself.

Tales from the Hinterland is available on Amazon and Book Depository.

Your Turn to Suffer, Tim Waggoner

Charged with committing unspeakable crimes in her past, Lorelei Palumbo finds her life slowly torn apart by a nightmarish group known only as the Cabal. What kind of crimes, you ask? The answer is a mystery even to Lori herself. Yet she must figure out her accused sins, and ‘confess and atone’ for them – or watch helplessly as the people and things she loves suffer the horrifying consequences.

Blending the supernatural and elements of splatterpunk, Your Turn to Suffer is a dark, brutal read. Tim Waggoner excels in building up a surreal sense of dread, blurring the boundaries between otherworldly horror and everyday tragedy with unnerving finesse.

The gory imagery here can get extreme – you’ll have visuals like the Garden of Anguish carved into your brain for a while. But the carnage is never just gratuitous, with interesting questions about morality woven into the wild ride.

Your Turn to Suffer is available on Amazon.

The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, Brian Evenson

Like your sci-fi with a dose of the supernatural? Brian Evenson’s latest short story collection is a medley of psychological thrills and ecological chills is for you.

Set in a far-flung future beyond the Anthropocene, his 22 macabre tales find humankind living amid the hell they have made of their earth. Keeping it refreshing, each story is animated by varying forces – from the terrors of technology to aliens to haunting presences beyond comprehension.

The collection opens with a bang with ‘Leg’, an uncanny tale of a bionic limb attached to a starship captain. This prosthetic gains sentience, starts acting out in murderous ways, and eventually persuades its owner to seek out a mysterious creature slithering through space.

‘To Breathe the Air’ takes us to a colony world of humans ruled by alien tyrants, while another air-centric tale, “Curator”, involves the last human’s fateful decision in the face of a poison cloud killing everything on earth.

The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell is available on Amazon and Book Depository.

Black Water Sister, Zen Cho

It’s tough being a fresh grad like Jessamyn Teoh. She’s broke, unemployed, closeted, back in Malaysia living off the charity of relatives… and she’s hearing a voice in her head. She eventually realises it’s the voice of the long-dead grandmother she never knew, who was once a spirit medium for an eerie deity dubbed Black Water Sister.

Even in death, Ah Ma has scores to settle on behalf of her god – and Jessamyn has become her unwilling pawn. Drawn into a web of spiritual grudges and family intrigue, she has to fight to regain power over her own life.

This supernatural fantasy by Malaysian author Zen Cho has made a splash in Asia and abroad, and we can see why. Jess’ adulting crisis makes her highly relatable, as does her tribe of hard-to-please relatives and loving yet conservative parents.

Her struggle to win back control of her body supernaturally is mirrored in her sense of powerlessness as a young, queer sort-of-adult. It’s a spirited page-turner, with as many disturbing moments as there are hilarious ones.

Black Water Sister is available in Kinokuniya Singapore.

Bloodline, Jess Lourey

A domestic thriller by Jess Lourey, Bloodline masterfully builds up the suffocating coils of its small-town setting like a snake. Pregnant journalist Joan Harken is persuaded by her fiancé to move from the city to his idyllic Minnesota hometown.

This close-knit Pleasantville, though, soon turns unsettling as Joan realizes her every move is tracked – even as her fiancé insists she’s being paranoid. When she stumbles upon the cold case of a little boy who vanished decades ago, Joan can’t resist probing – not realizing she is pulling on a far-reaching net of connections with links to her own baby.

It’s eerie enough that this novel is inspired by a true crime in Lourey’s own hometown, one that was never solved.

But its 1960s setting also chimes with a larger movement of second-wave feminism, when women fought for equal rights to employment and awareness of domestic abuse – Joan, for instance, is only able to get a job in town when her father-in-law ‘allows’ her to work. Add a sinister edge to that stifling small-town conformity, and you’ve got the dark ride that is Bloodline.

Bloodline is available on Amazon and Book Depository.

This article was first published in City Nomads.