14 Horror Books With Red Covers

For the second time in her life, the vampire finds herself on the coast of Buenos Aires in the nineteenth century watching villages turn into a glittering city.

In modern day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself grappling with her mother’s terminal illness and motherhood itself.

When they cross paths in a cemetery, something ignites between them and they continue to a place where there is no turning back.

No one is sure if it’s the redwoods, the mountain lions stalking the nearby hills, or a spell cast by it’s founder that keeps Red Grove safe.

Yet, a man has died here and Luce’s mother has gone missing. Luce is entirely devoted to the Red Grove and it’s rituals, and even though her mother is a frustrated free spirit, she would never just leave.

As Luce begins to find out where her mother went, strange things start happening, and the deeper she digs, the more she learns that everything she knows may be built on a devastating lie.

All Noemi wants is a fresh start away from the reservation she grew up on with a boyfriend who treats her right. But her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her plans to a halt.

The facts about his death don’t add up and she suspects something menacing might be lurking on their tribal lands. After ten years away, her Uncle Louie returns with his past filled with horrors that might be the key to determining Roddy’s cause of death.

Seven year old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are staying at a remote cabin in New Hampshire, with no one in more than two miles in each direction.

One day when Wen is out front, a stranger, Leonard, appears in the driveway. He wins her over immediately before abruptly telling her “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.”

Three more strangers show up with unidentifiable menacing objects, and as Wen runs to warn her parents, Leonard calls out “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

This the story of the Barrett family.  This normal New England family is torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie starts showing signs of acute schizophrenia.

Her doctors can’t stop her descent into madness and soon their stable home is a house of horrors.  Soon they turn to Father Wanderly, the local priest, who suggests an exorcism.  He also contacts a production company that is eager to film the family’s plight.  The family agrees with a pile of medical bills after Marjorie’s father has been out of work for over a year.

It’s 1901 and Ada Byrd has accepted a job teaching in Lowry Bridge, an isolated community where no one knows her and she can re-establish herself. She begins to see her future in the community and her past couldn’t be farther behind.

But then, she begins to witness something strange: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She believes Grey Dog is behind it, and as things continue, her confusion deepens as she can no longer tell what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory. She begins to push her new friends away and the only question left, is what is the real horror?

This is a collection of uncanny gothic short horror stories. Washington “explores the limit of intimacy and empathy with the vivid intensity of your worst nightmare.”

Even though Montserrat is a talented sound editor, she’s often left out in90’s Mexico City, and may as well be invisible to her best friend, Tristan, who she’s been in love with forever.

Tristan soon realizes his new neighbor is Abel Urueta, cult horror director, who claims he can change their lives. His magic film, a tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock, was never finished and he swears it’s what killed his career.

Now Urueta wants Montserrat and Tristan to help him finish the film, shoot the missing scene, and lift the curse, but Montserrat notices a dark presence following her and Tristan starts seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. They must work together to unravel the mystery of the film as they learn magic isn’t only in movies.

Paloma is dead, but before her murder, she was called Gaspar, and was a traditional healer. She taught her cousin, Feliciana, the sacred rites of the veladas, revealing the secrets of the Language and the Book.

Zoe arrives in San Felipe to investigate Paloma’s death and meets Feliciana. There, their fates intertwine in a dark, delicate dance. As Feliciana shares her journey to become a healer in a community that resists her, Zoe begins to unravel the hidden truths of her own life as a woman in a world shaped by men.

This story follows two rival teachers at a Hong Kong secondary school, forced to switch from Cantonese to Mandarin or lose their jobs. Wai, awkward and isolated, throws herself into mastering Mandarin, while Ling, skilled in navigating office politics, hopes to sidestep the challenge through charm and strategy.

As the pressure mounts, Wai cracks under the strain and takes her own life, leaving Ling to confront the seismic political and cultural shifts alone. Ling must now reckon with her survival instincts and decide how far she’ll go to thrive in a cutthroat, ever-changing work environment.

Miranda Crabtree’s father was killed when she was a child. Since then, she’s managed to keep her head down while moving contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and protect and old witch and secret child from harm.

Human and supernatural forces are at work conspiring to disrupt Miranda’s life in the bayou. She’s set on a desperate and dangerous path when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, forcing her to consider what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep loved ones safe.

Everyone knows the story of how the mermaid comes to shore and marries the prince, but everyone forgets they have teeth. And now her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

The mermaid is on the run with a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. They stumble across a snow covered village with ageless children thirsty for blood, and the three saints who control them. To survive, they must embrace the cruelest parts of their nature.

I read this earlier this year and mostly liked it but it is very weird and I also only half knew what was even going on.

Human Sacrifices exposes the hidden costs of a society built on exploitation. An undocumented woman answers a job ad, only to be held hostage; a group of outcasts fixates on boys who drowned while surfing; a troubled couple becomes lost in a nightmarish maze. It dissects the price paid by society’s most vulnerable so that the elite can live comfortably, untouched by the rot beneath.

Blending terror and beauty, Human Sacrifices is a masterful example of tropical gothic, where decay and oppression seep into the humid, hostile world. This collection of short stories explores the exploitation of working-class women and children, highlighting the invisible victims consumed by a ruthless capitalist system.

Nick Morrow never expected to hear from his father again. When he left rural Nebraska, he thought he was leaving behind his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that haunted his memories. But when Carlyle summons both Nick and his estranged brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, the brothers reluctantly return, hoping for a deathbed reconciliation.

Joshua and Carlyle quickly reconnect, but Nick and Emilia are left on their own. As Nick spends time with her, a flirtation turns into a passionate affair. But soon, he begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may be more than it seems—tied to something darker and perhaps even ancient. As the past resurfaces, Nick must confront the unsettling truth about his family and the woman he’s growing to love.

I started reading this one and ended up DNFing it. I like the idea of it but it just wasn’t doing it for me at the time.