Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Thomas Dunne Books 9781250099082, $25.99, 336pp, hc) October 2016.

The world of Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s fast-moving new novel, is one in which the existence of vampires has been an established and accepted fact for the last four decades. Some countries met this revelation by expelling vampires from their borders, others, by placing them under strict control. In response, many vampires relocated

Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, Ray Clu­ley (Spectral 978-0957392793, $20.00, 82pp) May 2015. (Snowbooks 9781911390879, £4.99, 84pp, pb) September 2016.

Ray Cluley’s Probably Monsters was one of the standouts of 2015, a collection of well-written stories about a variety of monsters in a variety of landscapes. His follow-up publication, the standalone novella, Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, is another success. Its protagonist, Gjerta Jørgensen, is a

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Paul Tremblay (William Morrow 978-0-0623-6326-8, $25.99, 336pp, hc) June 2016.

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, the gripping new novel from Paul Tremblay, begins with a phone call in the small hours of the morning. Elizabeth Sanderson, who answers the phone, has been waiting for a check-in from her son, thirteen-year-old Tommy, who is at a sleepover at a friend’s house. The phone’s trill fills her

The Suicide Motor Club, Christopher Buehl­man (Berkley 978-1101988732, $26.00, 368pp, hc) June 2016.

The Suicide Motor Club, the new novel from Christopher Buehlman, is a lean, mean, souped-up, eight cylinder, four-speed race car of a book. It begins at high speed, with Judith Lamb, the protagonist, in a car with her husband and five-year-old son. The year is 1967, and the Lamb family is driving east through New

The Fireman, Joe Hill (William Morrow 9780062200631, $28.99, 768pp, hc) May 2016.

The Fireman, Joe Hill’s big new novel, is a freight train of a book. Long, composed of many sections, it’s already in motion on the first page, and it does not let up until the very end. Its premise is straightforward: a plague is spreading around the world. The infection’s scientific name is Draco incendia trychophyton,

Experimental Film, Gemma Files (ChiZine 978-1771-48349-0, $16.99, 305pp, tp) Decem­ber 2015.

There’s a cache of lost films at the center of Experimental Film, the fine, compel­ling novel by Gemma Files. The movies were made in the early years of the 20th century by a woman who herself went missing during what should have been a routine train journey to Toronto. Shot on highly unstable silver nitrate stock, the

Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones (William Morrow 978-0-06-241269-0, $24.99, 320pp, hc) May 2016.

For some time, now, Stephen Graham Jones has been writing fiction that boldly engages familiar horror tropes, from demonic posses­sion, to the serial killer, to the zombie, in the process compiling one of the more impressive and interesting bibliographies in recent memo­ry. Now, in Mongrels, his excellent, exuberant new novel, he turns his attention to the