The corruption and dark underbellies throughout, the lurking folklore figure that seems to signal death and destruction, and the despairing community history of missing women set a brooding, ominous tone, yet Salt Bones often felt like a young-adult mystery. The reveal is immensely disturbing and makes various characters' sinister suspicions feel more than warranted. Jennifer Givhan's mystery-thriller-horror novel Salt Bones  made it onto multiple best-of lists for 2025, and

Bunny begins with an outcast main protagonist in a MFA program who's infuriated by her twee fellow seminar students. It builds into an increasingly unhinged, intriguing phantasmagoria, equal parts dark nightmare and outrageously silly absurdity. I was intrigued by the sound of We Love You, Bunny , the sequel to Mona Awad's novel Bunny , so I went back to first read this book. Samantha is a scholarship MFA student at the progressive Warren University in New England. An outside

I loved my first T. Kingfisher read. This was dark, sometimes wryly funny, haunting, and intriguing, and the resolutions to the...

Bardugo's rich world-building sets the scene in Spain during the Inquisition, as a scullery maid with magical abilities is thrust into...