Howard Gorman says:
Horror, much like grief, refuses to stand still. It morphs with the times, reflecting our collective anxieties back to us in freshly monstrous forms. In 2025, the genre feels especially vital – not simply in volume, but in thematic ambition, emotional nuance, and the boldness of its form. The year's standout titles have pushed past traditional scares to explore the tangled roots of contemporary dread – whether it be environmental ruin, cultural decay, institutional rot, fractured identity, or, threaded through it all, grief that refuses to be neatly resolved.
From a dust-choked reimagining of Frankenstein on the American frontier, to the unspooling of haunted videotapes, to slashing through the quiet corridors of a retirement home, the following novels reveal a genre alive with invention. Here, horror is not a detour from reality but rather a means of engaging with it.
