A Literary Apothecary

My newsletters indicate a massive number of horror books coming out this August, so with that many new novels, there should be something for everyone this season. With so much to choose from, I tried to be really picky with what I added to my TBR, only selecting the books that drew me in the most. I have six new titles that piqued my interest. Perhaps they’ll pique yours as well.

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The Residency

Synopsis

Don’t linger in the gallery. Don’t look too closely at the artwork. Don’t ask questions.

Artist and single mom Ginny is offered a place on a three-month artist retreat on a remote Scottish island. She leaps at the chance. Even better, her host is happy for her to bring her daughter Isla.

But the island is not what it seems. The inhabitants greet Ginny and Isla with stares and avoid contact wherever possible. And the house they’re staying in is old and strange. Eerie whispers follow Ginny through the corridors. Artworks once covered become uncovered. And unexplained smells clings to the walls lavender, cigar smoke and vomit.

With no WiFi on the island, no help from the locals and no regular transport back to the mainland, Ginny is stranded and all alone. She must unravel the dark secrets of the house before they claim her and her beloved daughter.

An unsettling gothic horror novel set on an isolated Scottish island. Perfect for fans of Sarah Pinborough, Rebecca Netley and Laura Purcell.

Why am I Interested?

I’m almost never going to turn down reading a book about an artist. For those who may not know, I’m actually an artist myself! All of the illustrations you see here on my blog were drawn by me. I always love reading about the way fictional artists think. What is their creative process like? Which parts do they find difficult? How do they feel when they create art? Even if the book itself ends up a bit middling, I can often find inspiration that I can try incorporating into my own work.

The Residency also sounds like it could be majorly atmospheric. An isolated island in Scotland sounds like the perfect moody setting for a Gothic story about a haunted gallery. A natural fit, one might say. I did also quite like The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, who is an author that this book is comped to. Purcell managed that atmosphere perfectly, so I would love to see how this book handles it as well.

The Unknown

Synopsis

In 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it’s happening again.

Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot.

Because New Avalon isn’t your ordinary island. A century ago, it was a commune for spiritual mediums—until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree in the middle of the island, one for each missing woman. Some locals say they simply left. Others think they were murdered. But the prevailing opinion, thanks to a diary left behind by one of the vanished, a young woman named Daisy Rue, is that a séance gone wrong conjured something supernatural that took them all one by one.

Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates, including legendary actress Violet Wright and white-hot director Ronan Peters, begin to realize all is not right with New Avalon. They hear strange noises in the night and notice mysterious symbols left behind by the island’s previous occupants. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin, Ronan, and the other actors stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again.

Is it the work of someone trying to derail the movie? Or is the island’s alleged supernatural past catching up with the present? As fear and suspicion mount, Marin turns to Daisy’s diary, hoping it holds the key to figuring out what really happened to the women of New Avalon—and how to keep the island’s terrible history from repeating itself.

Why am I Interested?

This is an interesting one for me. When I first got back into reading in 2024, I read The Only One Left by Riley Sager. I quite enjoyed it, and I ended up leaving it a four-star review. I believe at that point I had only read five to seven books in recent times, so I didn’t have very many points of comparison. I haven’t picked up another book by Sager since, not for any reason except I haven’t been interested in any. As I became more involved in the book community, so many of the creators I like and have similar taste to revealed that they really don’t like his books. As the years have gone on, I’ve become a bit suspicious. With the opinions I’ve been hearing and the increase in the number of thrillers I’ve read, would I have liked The Only One Left if I had read it with my current perspective? Did I only enjoy it because I had very little pre-existing frame of reference for thrillers? I have to find out.

The Unknown is listed as a horror thriller, and I hope that it will lean into the idea that it can portray darker elements. I’m intrigued by the timeline of the story, too. The initial disappearances happened a hundred years ago, so there’s no way that any of the disappeared women are still alive, and there’s no way the disappearances are caused by the same person, if there was a person at all. The description suggests it might be supernatural, and I’m interested to find out where that goes. This is also another book about a mysterious island. I have very specific tastes this month, apparently!

Reliquary

Synopsis

When Claire’s fiancé mysteriously dies of an unknown neurological illness, she’s prepared to sink back into the lonely life she lived before. Orphaned by a freak boating accident in her childhood, she never expected to find connection like she did with Elias, anyway. Their relationship wasn’t perfect—his coldness, his secrets, his strange aversion to the ocean—but what relationship is?

When Elias’s family reaches out—his incredibly wealthy family, from whom he was estranged—and invites Claire to a three-day wake at Harrow Point, their family home on a private island, Claire is given the chance to find family again. To belong to something, just like she’s always wanted. Just like Elias knew she was desperate to have.

Even if that family is a little strange. Even if their coastal home stirs up memories of the accident that killed her parents and sister. Even if Ash, Elias’s older brother, seems insistent on Claire leaving as soon as possible.

As she dives deeper into the world of Harrow Point, she will uncover the nature of her own traumatic connection to the ocean. There is something swimming in the bowels of Harrow Point, and it is hungry…

Why am I Interested?

Yet another story set on a mysterious island… It’s starting to get suspicious. This could also be another instance of rich people being bastards, but I’m not sure there’s enough evidence to say for sure. The relationship between Claire and Elias is the primary pull for me to this story. Does he actually love her? Is he protecting her from something to do with his family? It sounds like the exact right amount of toxic for a couple in a horror novel.

I suspect that his family had something to do with Claire being orphaned, and Elias knew more than he was letting on. I also have my suspicions about the “neurological illness” that killed him. Something about it definitely feels off.

Ocean horror is something I see less often than I would expect! There are lot of crazy creatures and phenomena that happen in the ocean, so it’s a very natural thing for people to fear. If this book manages to capitalize on that, I think it could be a huge hit with me.

Dreamland

Synopsis

The headlines are calling it the “summer of exsanguination” in LA—girls are being murdered, the Santa Ana winds are blowing a strange energy into the city, and all signs point to fire season.

More pressing for Anya Morris, though, is the drudgery of living at home, working part time at the family store, and contending with her mother’s disdain for the acting career Anya knows she’s destined for but that feels more impossible by the day.

It’s in this suffocating late summer heat that Anya receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an invitation to work for the de Witt family, one of LA’s most influential film dynasties. Soon, she’s spending her days and nights at their strange villa high in the Hollywood hills, where she meets Jude, a recluse who is both the family’s heir apparent and its most closely guarded secret.

There’s a magnetism to Jude that Anya cannot resist, despite warning signs that scream like sirens in the night. Because the villa holds generations of bloodstained history, and an occult family curse may even live within its walls—or within Jude himself.

In this city, everyone cuts a deal with the devil. When Anya comes face to face with a devil of her own, she’ll learn just how far she’s willing to go to get everything she’s ever wanted.

Why am I Interested?

I’ve heard very good things about Olivie Blake, but she typically doesn’t write in the genres that I read most often, horror and thriller books. I’m very excited to have a chance to pick up this author that I’ve heard so much about in a genre that I love. I have heard that Blake’s writing style is a bit… rambling, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Stories about rich people being bastards always interest me, maybe because I gain a bit of Schadenfreude thinking about how their lives are still miserable despite all their money. This seems like one of those stories, but make it horror.

It also appears like this might be a story about the corruption of the main character, Anya, possibly even involving a devil-worshipping cult. It reminds me a bit of the movie Ready or Not. That is speculation based on the blurb, but I eat up a corruption arc every time. If all that isn’t enough, there’s also apparently some kind of serial killer running around! The book is packed to the brim with things I enjoy, and I’m very excited to pick it up. Plus, the cover is gorgeous.

The Burn Line

Synopsis

There’s something lurking in the stifling darkness and labyrinthine tunnels that run below London… something old, something vicious, and something very, very hungry.

It’s the hottest summer on record and London is dying. Prices are high, pay is low, and stressed commuters are packed onto London Underground trains again like the pandemic never happened. To add to the misery, the temperatures underground just keep climbing and climbing, the heat trapped in the clay with nowhere to go.

Then one fateful morning five travellers on an unlucky tube carriage find themselves bound together as witnesses to a single horrific event – an event they can’t quite seem to remember.

They make an unlikely team – a weary tube driver, a disillusioned civil servant, an ambitious city trader, an overwhelmed hotel worker, and an unhoused young man just trying to get by – but now they must come together to confront what they have seen and stop it in its tracks before it kills them all.

Why am I Interested?

A brilliant cover, right off the bat. This is a book by the author of the Magnus Archives, which I’ve never listened to but I’ve heard great things about. The premise itself is very interesting to me, though. The synopsis is already quite atmospheric with the stifling heat, and the event in question is so intriguing. I’m dying to know what happened. I’m also interested in the idea that the story isn’t necessarily about the event itself, and the reader gets to follow the commuters who saw it as they try to move on with their lives.

The comps are compelling, too. I think it’s really interesting that two out of the three comps are a television show and a director of movies instead of other books. I’m not sure I’ve seen that very often. I do like Black Mirror, and it makes me think that maybe the event has to do with tech. I could be wrong. It might just be the dystopian vibes of Black Mirror. Either way, I’m super curious, and I’ve got to get my hands on this book.

Them

Synopsis

A top-secret government project hits upon a revolutionary idea for transporting matter across the vast reaches of the universe, and they succeed in bringing something back. Something alive. Something alien. They bring back THEM.

Mankind’s reign atop the food chain comes to an abrupt halt when a tractor trailer hauling a mustard-yellow shipping container mysteriously overturns and rolls off the highway, unleashing THEM upon an unsuspecting New England countryside. America soon falls, and the world follows.

Years later, one man emerges from the rubble of humanity, seeking other survivors and a shred of hope amidst an eerie and lonely landscape. He travels by night up the rural East Coast, discovering Americana ruins and encountering monsters the likes of which no human has survived before. Scarred and molded by the horrors of the new natural order, the man must face his own dwindling humanity, and pray that any other survivors have not become monsters themselves.

Why am I Interested?

This one might not have made my list for this month, except I’m doing a reading challenge this year where I need a post-apocalyptic horror story. While I picked it to check a box, I am interested in the story somewhat. I think the main part keeping me from getting fully invested is that I suspect that the “Them” in question are aliens, and I don’t typically find stories about aliens all that interesting. I watched Disclosure Day earlier this year… oof. I did not enjoy it in the slightest. So, I’m hoping that the book moves in a direction more interesting than basic aliens. I’d be glad to be surprised.

I do like other aspects of the synopsis, though. I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy a book with a road trip. It allows the author to spend time engaging with the character’s internal world while they move across vast distances, and it has the possibility of creating a really brilliant, lonely atmosphere. I also do want to know more about the nature of Them. I like the blurb keeping them mysterious, but I’m hoping for an interesting motivation for the creatures.

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That’s what I’m going to be adding to my TBR for the month of August. Do any of these books catch your eye? What are you reading this month?

I also noticed a very distinct theme with many of the horror books releasing this month. A significant portion were focused on grief and the past. I wonder why that is? Is publishing interested in this kind of story? Does this time of year make people nostalgic? I’d love to hear any theories that you might have.