THE FICTIONFOX

With exactly a week to go until Halloween, dark autumnal nights upon us, and the dregs of storm Austin howling outside my window tonight, I couldn't help but be inspired to bring you a Halloween Special edition of Suspiciously Specific. Today's theme is all about the creatures of the night. Of course, Goodreads, Storygraph, Reddit etc. are full of lists of horror-books that feature these specific creature-tropes. Instead of adding another list of famous best-sellers, I'm tryi

Genre: Fantasy Published: Blackstone Publishing, September 2026 My Rating: 2.5/5 stars “She was of the island, and the island was of her.” The Story: Cass was adopted as an infant and knows little about her birth-family. When she is informed that a family member has left her a crumbling house on Rothagisht -a remote island near the Arctic Circle- in their will, she seizes the opportunity for a new start. But the island of Rothagisht is nothing like she imagined. Ancient rites

Genre: (folk) horror Published: Erewhon Press, October 2026 My Rating: 1/5 stars Full disclosure: I couldn’t finish this book, but I’ve read plenty to be able to confidently say that I hated every second of it. If you’re wondering if you should read this book: ask yourself the following: are you in the mood for a supernatural woodsy-folk horror about a group of friends being picked-off one-by-one by an unseen creature/entity? are you okay with a cast that exists solely of EXT

Genre: Horror Anthology, Short-stories Published: Titan Books, October 2026 Review: 1/5 stars Anthologies are always iffy to rate, as it comes with the territory that you will inevitably like some stories more than others. To me, an anthology is good if it’s well curated, consistent in its theme and preferably inspires me to pick up at least one new author’s work because of their story. Unearthed is unfortunately the first anthology ever that I rate 1-star. This collection

Some people call it "summerween", but for me it was a complete coincidence that I happened to read three recently released horror-novellas almost back to back. This provided me with a perfect excuse to review them together in this three-of-a-kind post. All of these were effective bite-sized pieces of horror in their own right. Whether you're in the market for grief-horror, Lovecraftian terrors or a mix of domestic-tension-meets-body-horror: I've got a recommendation for you..

Genre: Horror novella Published: Honford Star, August 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “If my husband had looked human, whatever the circumstances, if he had looked even a little more human, you wouldn’t have killed him like that.” A Plagued Sea is a translated Lovecraftian horror novella, originally published last year in Korea. Often times, the words “Lovecraftian” and “cosmic” horror are used interchangeably, but in this case I specifically mean “inspired by Lovecraft’s mythology

Genre: Gothic horror mystery Published: Kensington (print) & Tantor Media (audio), July 2026 My Rating: 2/5 stars I am easily excitable when it comes to gothic tales with isolated island settings. Bonuspoints if those islands are Irish and/or Scottish or otherwise haunted by bleak weather year-round. Unfortunately, this specific Irish gothic murder-mystery was a miss for me. had this not been an ARC for review I would’ve almost certainly DNF-ed it. The story: Off the southern

Genre: Horror novella Published: Dead Ink Press, June 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars Every now and then I like to take a chance on an indie-horror book on Netgalley, with a unique premise and little to no context otherwise. Sometimes, this flops phenomenally, and other times I discover a hidden horror-gem such as this one. Inhalation follows Milo, a man in the terminal stage of his battle with cancer, haunted by fragmented and distorted memories of his disturbed childhood. Seeking

Genre: Mystery/Horror Published: Grove Press, May 2026 (UK) / October 2026 (US) My Rating: 4.5/5 stars "Oh yes, we are the lunatics, and yes we dwell in hell. The flames are hot but hey guess what? There’s torture here as well! Yet there’s a niggling conundrum, and that riddle go-eth thus: Are we dreaming this place, or is this place dreaming us?" I went back and forth on whether I could justify rounding up my rating to a full 5-stars.. On the one hand; objectively, this wasn

My Suspiciously Specific Series came into life as a way for me to explore and examine highly (often very specific) microtropes or trends I’ve been loving within my reading lately. A love for novels set in liminal spaces has been on the list of microtropes that I wanted to cover for a long time. Inspired by the trailer of a soon to be released movie, The Backrooms, that is soon to spark broader interest in the topic, I decided that today was the day to tackle this one. For tho

Genre: horror novella Published: Nictitating Books, March 1st 2026 My Rating: 4/5 stars “Humans are meat that dreams. Impulses of flesh within flesh, sinew and gristle, movement and longing, electric and chemical signals that create an experience called human.” There are a few tropes that I’d consider my “buzz-kill-words” in books. They are basically the opposite of buzz-words, meaning that if I hear your book contains one of these tropes, I will almost instantly lose interes

Genre: Sci-fi Mystery Published: Soho Press, May 2026 My Rating: 3.5/5 stars Equal parts police procedural, sci-fi mystery and societal dystopia; there were plenty of colors in the palette that Andrew Dana Hugh could’ve chosen to paint the story of Absence with. Instead of choosing however, he blends these genres together in a way that worked surprisingly well for me. The mix is a little reminiscent of Jeff Vandermeer or Blake Crouch, but less bleak and alien than the former,

Genre: horror Published: University of Massachusetts Press, March 2026 My rating: 5/5 stars "No matter what it’s meant to grow, a lab works on principles of limitation and elimination, defined by what it excludes. Like the barn where I kept Solo. Like the house where I was kept. Isolation is a tool of analysis. It is not a state to maintain indefinitely." It’s been almost two months and a partial reread, and I still cannot find the words to do justice to the way I admired and

Genre: horror, haunted-house Published: Tin House Publishing, March 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars "What would Lele say? What would Lele do? She asked herself these questions all the time, her answers feeble and uncertain, never knowing if she was right. She’d made this ghost. It couldn’t tell her anything new." The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is an incredibly effective ghost-story with themes of grief, trauma and social isolation. It drew me in with its atmosphere, but truly snuc

During the past month, I’ve been on a bit of an eco-fiction-kick, picking up stories that deal with environmentalism, nature vs humanity, and growth and transformation in various ways. Today, I want to combine 3 recent releases- each with their own spin on this theme – and review them side-by-side. From young-adult horror to literary fiction with a speculative twist; modern eco-fiction has something for everyone. Despite the fact that I didn’t rate any of these books very hig

Genre: literary horror, gothic, queer Published: Little Brown and Company, January 2026 My Rating: 5/5 stars, first favourite of 2026 "Because no matter how far you run, she knew—no matter how hard you try to shed your old skin and become something else—the place you come from stays with you. It always calls you back." The second I finished Hemlock , I realized two things. First, this was going to be a marmite-book that I won’t be able to recommend to just any wide audience.

Genre: Horror Published: Erewhon Books, January 2026 My Rating: 2/5 stars On a semi-objective level, Allison Mick’s eco-horror debut deserves about 3/5 stars, so that’s the rating I settled on for now. However, on a personal level, I had more of a 2-star experience with it. This is not a bad book, but it’s a type of horror that’s not for me. Unfortunately, I would’ve known to avoid this beforehand, had the marketing been a little different. More on this later in the review.

Genre: sci-fi, detective/murder-mystery Published: Grand Central Publishing & Brilliance Audio, January 2026 originally independently published by the author, November 2023 My Rating: 4.5/5 stars Small-town police-procedural meets cosmic sci-fi in this fantastic genre-bender that had me hooked from start to finish. If you're in the marked for something in the vein of True Detective , or Sleeping Giants meets a Blake Crouch -style mystery: consider this one to add to your TB

Genre: Literary Fiction Novella, Magical Realism, Post-apocalyptic. Published: New Directions (US)/ Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) , March 2024 My Rating: 1/5 stars "That was the future. This is now. The end of the world looks exactly the way you remember. Don’t try to picture the apocalypse. Everything is the same." I wanted to love this novella so bad. A magical realism story of an undead woman, tracking across a desolate landscape with a crow living inside her chest, explori

Genre: Cozy horror/fantasy Published: Titan Books, November 2025 My Rating: 5/5 stars "'It was a small kindness you did' they said. 'But you and I are both small creatures, are we not?' So the kindness feels larger.'" In the afterword, T. Kingfisher herself describes Snake-eater as “The platonic ideal of a Kingfisher horror novel”, and honestly, I have nothing to add... Neither to that description of the essence of this book, nor to the formula of cozy-horror that is synonym