Feeling brave? Pick up these tales published just this year. Teeming with supernatural beings and curses, they are sure to strike fear into the heart.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
By Kylie Lee Baker
Cora Zeng cleans crime scenes in New York’s Chinatown, scrubbing away the bloodstains of brutal deaths. Despite how much she erases, she cannot wash out the memory of her sister’s murder, or the words “bat eater” whispered by the killer before fleeing. Strange signs appear as the Hungry Ghost Festival draws close: bite marks on her furniture, bat carcasses at her job sites and, especially, the uncanny similarities between her recent clean-up victims — all women of East Asian descent. Though she attempts to bury the grief, the past refuses to stay hidden. Baker layers horror with cultural ritual, crafting an unnerving tale where ignoring the ghosts only makes them hungrier.
The Shaman’s Circle
By S W Jaafar
Set across centuries in Tana Toraja, Indonesia, an orphaned shaman named Minah seals a pact with a djinn, promising to sacrifice someone she loves in exchange for power. When marriage offers the hope of escape, tragedy strikes and her fate is bound forever. Decades later, Julia, a Malaysian woman yearning for a child, turns to Minah’s ritual for aid. However, miracles rarely come without cost and what begins as a blessing turns sinister. Julia finds herself ensnared between devotion, dark magic and inherited doom. Inspired by her husband’s personal encounter with a shaman, the local author draws you into the world of ancient rivalries with this novel.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
By Stephen Graham Jones
This American Indian story of revenge follows a vampire from the Blackfeet Nation, a group of Native American people in northwestern Montana. The story unravels through the discovery of a Lutheran pastor’s diary hidden since 1912. The journal unveils the testimony of Good Stab, a Blackfeet Indian whose unnaturally long life is spent seeking justice for his massacred kin, and a nearly forgotten chain of events where 217 Blackfeet were found lifeless in the snow. Through transcribed interviews, indigenous horror writer Graham Jones confronts the brutality of colonisation, the persistence of memory and the manner in which history refuses to be buried.
A Fiery Flesh and Other Stories
By Ismim Putera
This Malaysian collection blurs folklore, desire and horror in startling ways. Ismim uncoils tales where the human body becomes both sacred and cursed. They include those of a grieving man who encounters a merman resembling his deceased childhood friend; a forbidden passion that transforms lovers into bats and bakawali flowers; a misplaced placenta that unleashes generational curses; and a love triangle between sisters that leaves a mother no choice but to take her daughter’s place as bride. Each story captures the fragility and frailty of mortality, veined with sensuality and superstition ingrained in myths and domestic rituals in Southeast Asia.
Island of the Dying Goddess
By Ronit J
Stranded on Sawarrgh, an island suffused with grief, immortal explorer Anawar encounters a nightmare of gods and ghosts. He describes the archipelago’s horrors brought about by deities who maim their enemies and enslave kingdoms with just a thought. At the heart of it all lies a nameless goddess who traps the inhabitants in cycles of despair, inducing them to relive the same year endlessly. Anawar’s survival depends on unravelling this divine punishment and killing the goddess. This blend of mythic horror and philosophical dread interrogates the weight of eternal life, the violence of memory and whether escape from the chains of suffering is possible.
The Staircase in the Woods
By Chuck Wendig
What begins as a teenage camping trip turns into a lifelong calamity as five friends are bound together by their vow to protect one another. They stumble upon a mysterious staircase in a remote forest that leads to nowhere. When one of them climbs it, he vanishes, and so do the steps. Twenty years later, it returns, along with the group’s unanswered questions. Determined to uncover the truth and find their lost friend, they reunite and retrace old steps into a realm beyond reason. Using the imagery of a stairwell, Wendig spins an unnerving meditation on grief, friendship and the matters buried in the woods of their past.
rekt
By Alex Gonzalez
Sammy Dominguez has his world overturned when he loses his girlfriend in a car crash. Drowning in grief, he dives into grotesque corners of the internet, finding escape by obsessively consuming gore videos. A mysterious user then leads him to a site that hosts footage not only of the death of his lover, but hundreds of other fates awaiting people who are still alive. As he spirals, reality warps even more, further blurring the line between digital horror and human obsession. Reminiscent of Netflix’s Black Mirror with elements of cyber horror, Gonzalez warns about the emotional hunger we feed online and the monster it awakens.
When the Wolf Comes Home
By Nat Cassidy
Jess, a part-time waitress and struggling actress, discovers a five-year-old runaway boy hiding outside her apartment in the bushes. When his violent father begins to hunt them down, Jess and the child find themselves fleeing into a nightmarish plume of butchery and blood. They attempt to evade the man’s aggression, but the atrocities that follow are not merely human; there is something feral that grows with each stride. With riveting prose, Cassidy captures the terror of survival and the surreal slippage between predator and prey, evocating a tale of found family, violence and the ghouls that are unleashed when desperation claws too deep.
This article first appeared on Sept 8, 2025 in The Edge Malaysia.
