Best horror books to read in 2026, including must-read classics and new releases

Best horror books to read

Reading lists

The best horror books to read this spooky season

Freakslaw

A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy with believably complex characters.

Crackling with desire, hedonism, angst, violence and sex, this is a vibrant and wildly entertaining read.

The zany narrative races along, stuffed with chaos, magic and fabulously unique characters. It’s brilliant on how badly society treats its ‘freaks’. Mad and fun.

If it feels as if her debut […] is one she was born to write, then good for her. She succeeds magnificently, leaning into every queer punk excess and fantastical delight . . . A celebration of the marginalised, reframing otherness as a source of great vitality and power.

As frightening as it is seductive, this tale of a tightly knit band of outsiders pitting themselves against “that pulsing Calvinist heart” makes for a dark but thrillingly vibrant read.

Freakslaw is nonstop freaky, witchy, outlaw, glamour misfit fantasy - adventure fantasy, sex fantasy, revenge fantasy. Geek Love meets American Horror Story meets The Craft meets John Waters. I'd kill to run away with this circus.

A shimmering blade of a book. Every sentence is honed for high delight &mdash; a captivating cast of characters, dazzling language, and so funny &mdash; but there's a smart and dangerous bite to all the campy, glittery glory. Freakslaw makes space for feminist, queer anger... and shows it a great time. We've never been so happy to roll up, roll up.

Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of The View Was Exhausting

Delightful, delirious and transgressive, this book is the wildest of carnival rides, an open-mouthed kiss with the lingering taste of candyfloss and smoke. Jane Flett has created a queer punk masterpiece and we should all be so lucky to have our lives turned upside down by a visit to the Freakslaw.

Freakslaw is a cornucopia of the carnivalesque, where freaks are fabulous and weird is wonderful. Flett&rsquo;s sumptuously technicolour prose is as startlingly original as it is compulsively moreish.

Carole Hailey, author of The Silence Project

Part block party, part call to arms, Freakslaw is almost a new kind of genre. Wild, raunchy, brutal &ndash; a madcap funhouse with heart.

I don't think I've read anything quite like Freakslaw before. A wild, fun house of horrors &ndash; whip smart, the sharpest writing, funny, visceral and filled with vengeance. I loved it!

Rachelle Atalla, author of The Pharmacist

A strong spiritual successor to Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, Freakslaw gorgeously captures the desire to get away from places that can't contain you&mdash;and the complications of looking for escape.

Heather Parry, author of Orpheus Builds A Girl

Holy hell, I loved this book. A carnivalesque tale spun in luscious, crackling prose, Freakslaw is the glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn&rsquo;s Geek Love and Angela Carter&rsquo;s Nights at the Circus. You know those books you want to roll around in, rub on your skin, and clasp to your heart? Freakslaw is one, and I can&rsquo;t wait to see what Jane Flett does next.

Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

A stampede of literary brilliance, a riot of filthy delinquency, Jane Flett's Freakslaw is &ndash; like the funfair whose story it tells &ndash; on a mission to liberate and unnerve. A well-plotted, page-turner where an unforgettable cast of characters bathe in the glow of her linguistic fireworks, Freakslaw is a one queer roller coaster you won't want to get off.

Victoria Gosling, author of Before the Ruins

Warm, hazy, sensual and alive, Flett’s setting is made so rich by her darkly lyrical writing style – highly original and almost poetic, striking in the confidence and completion of its sound for a debut novel – that the novel almost physically feels as though it lasts the entire summer.

Beg, borrow, or buy this one. Because when the Freakslaw comes to town, you want to be around for it.

With a large cast of characters handled skilfully by the author, the overall feeling of Freakslaw is a picaresque Day-Glo nightmare of a book, a modern slice of folk horror that shows heaps of promise for the future.

One that I am forcing my friends to read just so we can discuss it

Flett presents a bonkers, yet accurate, representation of the Shire in a sticky, nasty bottle.

Delightfully dark and experimental, a celebration of the wild pleasures of living in the world and in every variety of human body

Discover the dazzling new queer literary horror novel about chosen family and the risks it takes to become the person you want to be. 
 
‘The glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.’ Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger 
 
A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong? 
 
It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. 
 
Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape. 
 
But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge. 
 
And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed… 
 
 
Praise for Freakslaw: 
 
'A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy' Guardian 
 
'Crackling with desire, hedonism, angst, violence and sex' Heat 
 
'As frightening as it is seductive' Herald 
 
'I'd kill to run away with this circus' Michelle Tea, author of Modern Tarot 
 
‘A queer punk masterpiece' Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells 
 
'A strong spiritual successor to Katherine Dunn's Geek Love' Heather Parry, author of Orpheus Builds a Girl

Jane Flett

A shocking, sexy novel about climate and chosen community that lives up to Flett’s sparkling debut

Imagine an apocalypse so queer, sultry, and heat-soaked that you wrap your arms around it and give it a lush kiss. This is Jane Flett's Welcome to the Chaoskampf, a beautifully crafted, breakneck paced, terrifically weird novel. Somehow Flett always gives me the book I want to read, something so outrageous and fleshy that I stamp my feet with rage that I didn't imagine it myself. I fiercely loved the Chaoskampf

Sizzling with juicy irreverence, Welcome to the Chaoskampf chooses life at its messiest, and fullest. Jane Flett once again rallies the beautiful weirdos: a rambunctious cult, sex and the end of the world, what else could one want? An unmissable book, ferocious and brilliantly bonkers!

Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio

With Welcome to the Chaoskampf Jane Flett brings us an apocalypse that is as stunningly outrageous as it is eerily real, populated with characters we’d all be lucky to spend the end times with. Full of incomparable energy, sharpness of eye and wit, and a delightfully dark absurdity, this book is tremendous

Seductive, challenging and insightful, Flett's latest is a deliciously violent careen into wild, cultic madness. A battle hymn to the chaos goblin that lurks within us all

Our collective future is freaking scary. On page one of Jane Flett’s Welcome to the Chaoskampf, the state of Florida falls into the sea. Only Marcy, the main character, is intrepid and wide open -- a woman, literally, with an open wound directly below her beating heart. It feels like anything can happen in Flett’s audacious and mesmerizing second novel, and in many ways, everything does

Jane Flett's trademark gang of queer weirdos against the world climbs to new heights in Welcome to the Chaoskampf, a dizzy and exhilarating freefall into apocalyptic chaos. A charming cult, crackling atmosphere, and sentences so lush you'll want to eat them

'Imagine an apocalypse so queer, sultry, and heat-soaked that you wrap your arms around it and give it a lush kiss' Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger 
 
'Sizzling with juicy irreverence, Welcome to the Chaoskampf chooses life at its messiest, and fullest' Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio 
 
'As stunningly outrageous as it is eerily real . . . this book is tremendous' Michelle Tea, author of Valencia 
 
 
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. MAKE IT COUNT. 
 
The year that Florida fell into the sea, I killed a man and joined a cult and ran away to Mexico. I ate human flesh for the first time. 
 
It’s another sticky summer in New Orleans, and the world is ending. Tourists are descending on the city, natural disasters abound, and Marcy’s old boxing scar has reopened. It’s enough to make any girl want to take her seemingly perfect life and set it all on fire. 
 
So when Marcy meets a crew of degenerate filmmakers hell-bent on summoning the apocalypse, she lets herself be swept into their world of filth, arson and debauchery. 
 
They think her scar might mark her as their Chosen one, and she's never been able to resist a bit of flattery. Who wouldn't want to bring about a revolution? But the more entangled she becomes in their world, the harder it is to resist the very power she swore to burn . . . 
 
'A battle hymn to the chaos goblin that lurks within us all' Leon Craig, author of The Decadence 
 
'A dizzy and exhilarating freefall into apocalyptic chaos' Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of Feast While You Can 
 
'It feels like anything can happen in Flett’s audacious and mesmerizing second novel, and in many ways, everything does' Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car 
 
Praise for Freakslaw 
'A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy' Guardian 
'Cracking with desire, hedonism, angst, violence and sex' Heat 
'A celebration of the marginalised' Observer 
'As frightening as it is seductive' Herald

Jane Flett

Books by Jane Flett

Articles featuring Jane Flett

The best horror books to read this spooky season

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter