We at Five Books consider the shortlists for the annual Bram Stoker Awards an excellent source of horror novel recommendations. Every year, the members of the Horror Writers Association—an international collective of authors and publishing professionals—nominate new work for consideration in a number of different literary forms, from screenplays and anthologies to short stories and even poetry. Here, we will be focus on the 2026 shortlist of the best new novels, but we do recommend horror fans take the time to peruse the full list of nominees and category winners, available here.
The 2026 winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel:
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
This book has found a huge amount of success in a short space of time—and this new prize comes hot on the heels of a Nebula Award and a Locus Award. The audiobook has also won two further awards. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a high concept historical horror novel which unfolds in three related strands: a modern-day academic researching for a book project, the diaries of a Lutheran minister on the American frontier, and the confessions of a Blackfoot man with a dark secret. When the fantasy novelist Katherine Arden recently recommended it to us, she said: “it’s bloody, it’s fantastical, it’s vengeful… It’s very complex, and very heartfelt. It’s a book that I think needs to be read.” But be warned—it’s also very violent. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter featured on Barack Obama’s annual summer reading list and the New York Times list of notable books of the year. Unmissable.
And the four books that made the shortlist:
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
We are big fans of Grady Hendrix here on Five Books; we interviewed him about the best vampire books last year following the publication of his last novel, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. This new novel, a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, is set in 1970s Florida, in a home for young unwed mothers. The residents are kept under tight control, but when a librarian shares a book about the occult, the girls discover a way to reclaim power. “Hendrix’s genius as a horror writer is his ability to develop complex, human-scale emotional arcs,” declared the New York Times. “At turns frightening, anxiety-producing, infuriating, beautiful and sad, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a perfect horror for our imperfect age.”
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Imagine the elite liberal arts college setting of The Secret History, add in the summoning of a horrifying supernatural entity with a thirst for blood sacrifice, and you have something resembling the concept of King Sorrow, the new book from bestselling US horror author Joe Hill—who is, incidentally, also the son of Stephen King. This is a doorstopper of a book with tonnes of plot—expect blackmail, murder, betrayal and… dragons. It sits somewhere between the genres of horror and fantasy, yet also riffs off the very real anxieties of contemporary America. If you like a big book that can keep you entertained for more than 900 pages, then this is the one for you.
The Bewitching by Silvia Morena-Garcia
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches,” begins this richly imagined novel that knits together the storied history of witchcraft in Massachussetts with folklore from the author’s Mexican heritage. In three parallel storylines, a Mexican rancher goes missing at the turn of the 20th century; a beautiful young woman vanishes from a college campus in the 1930s, and another mysterious disappearance from the same institution in the 1990s. “I figured out that both Mexican folklore and the New England backdrop could speak to each other in interesting ways,” Morena-Garcia explained in an interview. “The roles of witches in society of course change and vary depending on the time and place we’re talking about.” Expect a slow burn folk horror that spans much of a century and the best part of a continent.
Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
In the award-winning author Wendy N. Wagner’s new ‘eco-horror’, a freelance writer, Erin, travels to a picturesque town in the Pacific North West to investigate the years-old disappearance of her brother. Soon she learns that Bryan is only one of many missing persons—and the answers seem to lie in the vast and ecologically bizarre forest beyond the edge of the clearing. Expect mystery, body horror and weird fungi reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. An interesting new addition to the rapidly growing (and amusingly named) sub-genre ‘Sporror‘—also known as ‘spore core’—and it features some fun experiments in perspective.
What horror novels have you been enjoying recently? Let us know by getting in touch on social media.
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