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One of the best parts of being a Collection Development librarian at Ingram is the opportunity to watch publishing trends as they form. Within our department, we’re very aware of major trends, but we often keep personal lists of microtrends as we notice them pop up to keep our eyes on them.
For me personally, horror trends are always the most fun to track. I’ve put together some new and forthcoming titles as examples of the trends I’m seeing, just in time for Halloween ordering, displays, and haunted reading.
The thing is, I’d hesitate to call myself a true horror expert, since I gravitate heavily toward ghost stories and more psychological tales of dread. (There are other librarians who have a much deeper expertise the genre, with excellent resources.) But regardless of whether I personally read within every facet of horror, it’s my favorite genre to pay attention to since it’s constantly evolving in remarkable ways. Across major publishers and small presses, it exhibits deep creativity in playing with established tropes and is one of the most inclusive genres for race, gender, and sexual diversity. It can range from the most blood-soaked final girl novel like I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones to lighter, humorous takes like Nightmare of a Trip by Maureen Kilmer. Its ability to provide commentary on personal struggles and the state of the world always makes it stand out from the hundreds of titles I see a day. No matter your level of fear, it’s a good time to be a horror reader.
Add a “Gothic” label to a book and I’m 100% likely to add it to my TBR, so I’m pleased to say that Gothic horror is a major trend that’s still holding strong. Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio is one that I’m especially looking forward to. It’s a novella about night-shift workers who cross paths in a college cemetery and discover a newly dug grave that shouldn’t be there. Fans of dark academia (that’s me!) will be the natural audience to hand this to. Southern Gothic is revived in This Cursed House by Del Sandeen, in which the wealthy Duchon family hires Jemma in 1960s New Orleans. The Duchons have been passing as white and look down on the darker-skinned Jemma, until it’s revealed that she can break the curse they’ve been living under for generations. Donyae Coles’ Midnight Rooms is set in the quintessential Gothic setting of 19th century England, where Orabella – and outsider in society for being both biracial and without fortune – is suddenly courted by a wealthy man. After their wedding, she’s brought to Blakersby Hall, a country house full of mysterious passageways, anxious servants, and a family with secrets. Readers of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia are sure to love this.
On the other end of the spectrum, science horror is also a major trend, especially books that explore climate change and AI, where the real fears we share can be explored through the safety of horror. In Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, a toxic algae bloom in the ocean has poisoned the air and decimated the food supply, leaving the population to eat a disgusting pink paste made by a processing plant. But what is it? Another sea-borne contagion is central to Nicholas Belardes’ The Deading. What appears to be a manmade disaster impacting a California town’s oyster harvest is revealed to be supernatural when people begin “deading”: falling down in the throes of death, only to revive with no memory of what just happened. The questions and implications of AI are fresh in everyone’s minds right now, so Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays feels especially apt. Misha has successfully written in Hollywood for years, but when he refuses to kill off his queer characters at the behest of studio execs and their AI-driven algorithm, he begins to be literally haunted by the monsters of his past. The haunted house trope takes a twist in William by Mason Coile. Henry creates an artificially intelligent robot he names William, but when he begins to interact with Henry’s smart home, William exerts control over the daily lives of Henry and his wife.
Some microtrends that are extra-exciting me right now: camping horror seems to inspire the thrill and aesthetic of 1970s and ‘80s slashers and Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin takes it to gory extremes at a secret gay-conversion camp. The cursed-movie trope is also a rising trend and Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay is the biggest one you need: a ‘90s horror movie was never released, but a studio is pushing for a reboot. Only one member of the original cast survives and knows the bizarre events that cursed the original production. I’m also seeing a lot of what I’ll call beauty horror: gruesome stories that examine the pressure women to maintain unsustainable youth. E.K. Sathue’s Youthjuice forces Sophia to make hard choices when she learns what goes into her favorite moisturizer.
If you also love tracking horror trends, we have several resources to help. Our Top 50 New and Popular Horror ipage list gives you the must-have titles, and the Diverse Horror list will add essential representation to your collection. While it’s not horror-specific, Coming Soon is a fantastic monthly resource to see forthcoming titles well before publication date and will give you the chance to watch horrifying and spooky trends forming, too. Happy Halloween!
Collection Development Librarian II
