Dark Books July 2024 part 1 of 2

Adult Fiction July 2024 part 1

(Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you)

The Astrology House, by Carinn Jade (Atria Books, July 16, 2024)

A group of wealthy, successful Manhattanites goes to an astrology-themed retreat in this page-turning thriller. The astrologer has a dark plan for her guests, and not all of them will leave the house alive. A “beach read” type book for those of us on the darker side of life.

https://amzn.to/3VOIQam

The Bang Bang Sisters, by Rio Yoeurs (William Morrow, July 16, 2024)

Brea, Jessie and Flo are members of a cool rock band. But they’re also secretly vigilante assassins who drive their tour bus around the country dispensing justice to criminals who slipped the system. They’re tracking a serial killer known as “The Wren” and only one of the sisters will survive the next 48 hours in this action packed thriller.

https://amzn.to/4clmCUN

The Black Bird Oracle, by Deborah Harkness (Ballantine Books, July 16, 2024)

The fifth book in the ‘All Souls” series featuring scholarly witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew de Clermont. A previously unknown aunt, Gwyneth, sends Diana a note, “It’s time to come home.” Diana and Matthew test their twins, Pip and Rebecca, for magic. Diana’s determined not to spellbind them.

https://amzn.to/3VJ84ad

Briefly Very Beautiful, by Roz Dineen (The Overlook Press, July 2, 2024)

Dystopian fiction where a mother flees the city with her three children during a destabilizing time of near societal collapse due to bad air, wildfires, floods, supply shortages and homegrown terror. The seemingly peaceful costal commune the family ends up at has a dark undercurrent.

https://amzn.to/3RTaSAv

Bright Objects, by Ruby Todd (Simon & Schuster, July 16, 2024)

A woman searching for her husband’s killer meets a mystic who believes that a recently discovered approaching comet has a divine message.

https://amzn.to/3xKwet1

Bury Your Gays, by Chuck Tingle (Tor Nightfire, July 9, 2024)

An LGBTQ+ horror novel set in Hollywood, with the producer of a streaming series being pressured to kill off his two gay characters “for the algorithm.” And monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends!

https://amzn.to/45KehaE

The Deading, by Nicholas Belardes (Erewhon, July 23, 2024)

A hidden evil emerges from the ocean and infects the residents of a small fishing town. Sea snails wash ashore, infecting the residents, who die and then come back changed, as “Risers.” The town is isolated, and survivors have to find a way to get out of the isolated village.

https://amzn.to/3RPOt7d

The Dissonance, by Shaun Hamill (Knopf/Doubleday, July 23, 2024)

Three students of the eccentric Professor March have been trained in a system of magic called ‘The Dissonance,’ which works by harnessing negative emotions such as anger and pain. Twenty years later, they’re called back to their hometown to help after an idiot teenager’s séance summoned a murderous entity.

https://amzn.to/3RQMXBL

Dracula (Arcturus Ornate Classics) by Bram Stoker (Sirius, July 2, 2024)

A stunning edition of the classic vampire book. Beautiful for your bookshelves.

https://amzn.to/3RQ4Lgp

Echoes of Memory, by Sarah Driscoll (Kensington, July 23, 2024)

A woman with post-traumatic attack amnesia witnesses a murder in the alley and writes it all down carefully in her notebook so she can remember It the next day. But by the time the police arrive, there’s no body and no crime scene. The next day, she starts having flashbacks, and realizes the killer knows she’s a witness..

https://amzn.to/4eHO14N

The Family Experiment, by John Marrs (Hanover Square Press, July 9, 2024)

A dystopian thriller set in the future UK, where the world population is soaring, but in the UK nobody can afford to start a family. For families desperate to have a child, you can pay a subscription service for access to a virtual child via a VR headset. A reality show called “The Substitute” will follow ten couples as they raise their virtual children from “birth” to age 18 though an artificially condensed nine month period. They compete to keep their virtual child, or risk it all for the chance of a “real” baby to keep.

https://amzn.to/4bpfnK0

Folk Tales of the Night: Stories for Campfires, Bedtime and Nocturnal Adventures, by Chris Salisbury (The History Press, July 2, 2024)

A master storyteller from the UK rewrote and respun these folk tales of stars, sea, creatures and ghosts. They’re ideally shared around a campfire late at night.

https://amzn.to/3RQ3w0u

Ghost Stories: Chilling Tales of the Supernatural (Arcturus Gilded Classics) (Sirius, July 2, 2024)

A stunningly beautiful gift edition of fifteen ghost stores by Edith Wharton, Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, etc.

https://amzn.to/3XPdvHA

The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Riverhead Books, July 2, 2024)

In this thriller set in 1975, a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk in the cabin. A girl, Barbara, has gone missing. She’s the daughter of the camp’s owners, but the disturbing part is, her older brother also went missing fourteen years before, never to be found.

https://amzn.to/4eLcPcc

The Haunting of Hecate Cavendish, by Paula Braxton (St. Martin’s Press, July 23, 2024)

Part 1 in a series. Set in England in 1881. Hecate Cavendish is about to become assistant librarian at Hereford Cathedral, which houses a chained library, and a map of the medieval world. Hecate sees ghosts, and some need her help, and some are threatening her very existence.

https://amzn.to/4ePh72k

Heads Will Roll, by Josh Winning (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, July 30, 2024)

A troubled TV actress is sent to a summer camp for adult celebrities to take a break and leave their mistakes behind. There’s no phones allowed, so the campers have no way to call for help when one of them goes missing and others start to lose their heads (literally).

https://amzn.to/4cH8sgu

Her Cruel Dahlias, by Candace Robinson (Crooked Heart Publishing, July 11, 2024)

 Cricket Wakefield was brutally murdered, but the dead don’t always stay dead. She’s awoken from the dead a year later by a necromancer, and she joins a carnival. More women turn up dead, and they all still have the same black dahlias on her body. She must find and stop her killer before she dies again.

https://amzn.to/4eQrrXC

House of Shades, by Leeanne Dillsworth (Harper, July 16, 2024)

A Black female doctor in 1830s Victorian London moves to a dark and foreboding house to try to cure its owner. But it’s not that simple, and she begins to unearth secrets.

https://amzn.to/3L9pB6x

I Was a Teenage Slasher, by Stephen Graham Jones (Simon & Schuster, July 16, 2024)

A teenager in a small town in Texas is cursed to kill for revenge. This is their autobiography.

https://amzn.to/3RRwltM

Look in the Mirror, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine Books, July 30, 2024)

Nina’s father dies, leaving her an estate in the British Virgin Islands she hadn’t known existed. It’s a modern high-tech house with glass and marble. She’s not sure how he got the money for it and why he kept it a secret. Meanwhile medical student Maria is a nanny for the super rich. She travels to a fancy house to start work, but her employers haven’t arrived yet. Their only message is “Don’t go in the basement.” Reminds me of Bluebeard?

https://amzn.to/3W3M2R3

The Lost Story, by Meg Shaffer (Ballantine Books, July 16, 2024)

In this Narnia-inspired fairy tale for grownups, two boys go missing in a West Virginia forest, only to reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d been or what happened. Fifteen years later, one is an artist with no memory of what happened, and the other a missing persons investigator who does remember the magical realm they’d gone to. They’re called on to find Emilie’s missing sister, lost in those same woods.

https://amzn.to/3VJpy6A