The Year of Witching by Alexis Henderson is a bold story of a woman finding her power in a restrictive society. Because her father is an outsider of a different race, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is considered blasphemous. While she tries to be pious, one day Immanuelle is led into the woods surrounding her society of Bethel, and there the spirits of four slain witches help her discover her true power, as well as her destiny.

Continuing the grand tradition of city dwellers naively moving into picture perfect and definitely haunted secluded houses in the countryside, Wonderland by Zoje Stage is downright harrowing. Orla and Shaw Bennett move their family to the mountains for a fresh start, but it doesn't take long for them to realize there's something evil lurking in the woods. Now only Orla can save her family from the darkness that's coming for them all.

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay is an eerie story of a rabies like pandemic with a short incubation period. Within an hour of being bitten by an infected person, people go mad. When a pregnant woman is bitten while trying to help her husband, she and her pediatrician friend must race against the clock in order to get her to the hospital in time to receive a vaccine before she and her unborn child succumb to the virus.

Alternating between the past and the present, The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James is a thriller-horror hybrid where the ghosts aren't nearly as scary as the living. After her mother's death, Carly takes a break from college to follow in her long presumed-dead Aunt Viv's footsteps by taking a job at the rundown Sun Down Motel. As she digs into her aunt's past, Carly discovers the disturbing reason why the motel's spirits can't find peace.

If Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Steel Magnolias had a baby it would look an awful lot like Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. This story of a '90s era group of suburban housewives facing off against a dangerous vampire is exhilarating, empowering, and much scarier than the whimsical title suggests.

Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians is so intense it doesn't pause to let you catch your breath from one haunting page to the next. When a traumatic incident from their childhoods comes back to haunt four American Indian men they find themselves in a battle for their lives against a relentless supernatural foe.

My Mother's House by Francesca Momplaisir is one of 2020's most essential reads. The book, which is told from the perspective of a house watching the evils occur within it, is as much a story of the immigrant experience in America as it as a horror novel. The story follows a family of Haitian refugees who set about making a new life for themselves in New York, only to find that the house they've moved into is silently judging them.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s Mexico, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an atmospheric read with shades of Rebecca and Jane Eyre. When her newly married cousin sends her a concerning letter, Noemí heads to a manor tucked away in the Mexican countryside to check on her relative. What she finds is a house full of secrets and a dark past that seems to be seeping into her dreams.

Stephen King's reign as the master of modern horror continues with If It Bleeds. The collection of four novellas — "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," "The Life of Chuck," "Rat," and the titular "If It Bleeds" — is by turns frightening, wry, and full of shocking twists.

Riley Sager's Home Before Dark nimbly straddles the line between the thriller and horror genres. Told in chapters that alternate between the past and the present, the story follows the now adult Maggie Holt who grew up in the shadow of her family's infamous midnight flight from Banebury Hall.