The Grimoire: 30 Spine-tingling Titles for Halloween 2025, Part 1
In Part 1 of this year’s roundup of spine-tingling titles for Halloween 2025, we’ll explore family secrets, intergenerational trauma, food insecurity, celebrity fandom, arctic horror, boreal gothic, Faustian deals, and so much more to scare you senseless this spooky season.
October 1, 2025
Bluenose Magic. Helen Creighton, Nimbus Publishing. $24.95, 324 pp., ISBN: 9781774714720
Bluenose Magic (3rd ed)
by Helen Creighton
October 2025
“The classic work of Nova Scotia folklore, available with an attractive new cover and original pen-and-ink illustrations.
Bluenose Magic, first published in 1968, is considered a classic of Maritime literature, and its author, Dr. Helen Creighton, is one of Canada’s best-loved and most respected folklorists.
This fascinating and engaging companion to the author’s bestselling Bluenose Ghosts welcomes readers into a world of forerunners, enchantment, dreams, divination, buried treasure, guardian ghosts, home remedies, and mystical occurrences. These unique tales have been passed on from generation to generation of Nova Scotia’s families.”
The Haunting of Paynes Hollow. Kelley Armstrong. St. Martin's Press. $29.00, 288 pp., ISBN: 9781250360564
The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
by Kelley Armstrong
October 2025
“From New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong comes a nail-biting supernatural horror about a haunted lakeside property and twisted family secrets.
When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.
But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather's words.
Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.”
Malice at the Mall. Pierrette Dubé. Orca Book Publishers. $12.95, 128 pp., ISBN: 9781459842991
Malice at the Mall
by Pierrette Dubé (author), Ninon Pelletier (illustrator), David Warriner (translator)
september 2025
“When eleven-year-old Mina is banned from screen time, she sneaks out of the house with her game console and takes refuge at the mall.
Mina is so focused on her game that before she knows it, the mall is closed, deserted and locked with her stuck inside. But...is she really alone? Mina searches for a way out, all the while feeling as if she's being watched. To her horror, the store mannequins come to life and chase her down, determined to make her one of their own.”
Devouring Tomorrow. A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis. Dundurn Press. $24.99, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781459754980
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food
edited by A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis
March 2025
“An anthology of speculative short fiction imagining the possibilities of our food-insecure future.
Our lives, our culture, our community all start with and revolve around food and eating. Sharing meals with family and friends has been a hallmark of human society from our earliest beginnings. But we are entering an era of unprecedented change. Climate, technology, the global spread of crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators threaten to change not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.
Devouring Tomorrow explores this strange new menu through the eyes and palates of some of Canada’s most exciting authors. See a world with no bees left to pollinate our crops. Encounter lab-grown meat so advanced that it becomes sentient. Visit a land where diseases wipe out a common fruit and the society of a nation changes around its loss. This is not the world of the distant future — this is tomorrow.
Featuring stories from:
Sifton Tracey Anipare • Carleigh Baker • Gary Barwin • Chris Benjamin • Eddy Boudel Tan • Catherine Bush • Jowita Bydlowska • Lisa de Nikolits • Dina Del Bucchia • Terri Favro • Elan Mastai • Mark Sampson • Ji Hong Sayo • Jacqueline Valencia • Anuja Varghese • A.G.A. Wilmot”
Leave Our Bones Where They Lay. Aviaq Johnston. Inhabit Media. $19.95, 136 pp., ISBN: 9781772275896
Leave Our Bones Where They Lay
by Aviaq Johnston
October 2025
“Every solstice, Jupi—just as his father did before him, and his before him—must make a nearly impossible pilgrimage to light an oil lamp at the base of a remote cliff. There he must wait for Kipik, an ancient being who has bound Jupi’s family to a mammoth task: share a story every visit that appeases the fickle Kipik, or suffer unthinkable consequences.
For decades Jupi has made the trek, growing grey and exhausted carrying this burden. Nearing the end of his life, Jupi knows he must name a successor, someone from his bloodline who can carry this weight and pass it on to future generations. But Jupi’s life has not been easy. His three children, one deceased, one incarcerated, one addicted, are not suitable successors. So Jupi must connect with a granddaughter he barely knows, whose language he barely speaks, and convince her to carry the weight of their family, perhaps their whole community, for the rest of her life.
This moving collection explores shifting definitions of what it means to be accountable to others, how family and community are defined, and how the spirits and demons of the past (both personal and legendary) are very much alive today.”
As the Earth Dreams. Terese Mason Pierre (ed.). House of Anansi Press. $24.99, 288 pp., ISBN: 9781487012663
As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories
edited By Terese Mason Pierre
October 2025
“A ground-breaking anthology of haunting speculative stories by contemporary Black Canadian writers that explore growth, futurity, and joy.
This bold and innovative anthology of speculative short fiction reveals and uplifts the spectacular imaginings, reveries, reflections, experiments, and hopes of Black writers in Canada. A woman attends her mother’s latest resurrection, only to encounter family she’s never met. A postdoc instructor navigates an almost-life in an Elsewhere realm of safety and comfort. After social collapse, a former sex worker leaves her precarious station, and her memories, behind. A woman isolating from a new virus starts hallucinating. In lyrical fragments, a young nanny accepts a job with a peculiar employer. A medium is tasked with summoning a spirit that hits too close to home. And two teenagers test a friendship over magic carpet flying practice. These breathtaking stories explore natural and urban landscapes, living and dead relationships, economic catastrophe, love, and desire—all while celebrating the persistent and ever-changing self, and envisioning beautiful Black futures.
Featuring stories by:
Trynne Delaney
francesca ekwuyasi
Whitney French
Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga
Chimedum Ohaegbu
Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Chinelo Onwalu
Lue Palmer
Zalika Reid-Benta”
The Haunted Blizzard. Aviaq Johnston and Athena Gubbe (illus.). Inhabit Books. $22.95, 40 pp., ISBN: 9781772275605
The Haunted Blizzard
by Aviaq Johnston (author), Athena Gubbe (Illustrator)
April 2025
“From award-winning author Aviaq Johnston, comes a new horror graphic novel.
A teenage girl walks home in a burgeoning blizzard, happy to have an unexpected snow day. Ignoring an Elder’s warning about the terror the blizzard holds, she finds herself alone in her home with an unseen presence stalking and tormenting her. What does it want? And will she survive?”
Veal. Mackenzie Nolan. ECW Press. $24.95, 288 pp., ISBN: 9781770418066
Veal
by Mackenzie Nolan
October 2025
“Offering the atmosphere of Twin Peaks and the queer camaraderie of comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Veal is a thrilling exploration of friendship, fear, and the thin line between justice and vengeance.
Delores “Lawrence” Franklin is a failed capitalist and a runaway headcase. Following a corporate meltdown, she moves to Mistaken Point, a small town known for two things: Mistaken Point University, where she and her best friend, Anastasia Lanes, are now enrolled, and the grisly murders of countless young women.
At her new part-time arcade job, Lawrence meets Francesca “Franky” Delores, gritty, off-putting, and chronically serious, as opposite to Lawrence as her name would suggest. Franky is convinced there is a monster on the loose, a Frankenstein creature born from hatred, responsible for the string of killings the town insists are solved.
Against the advice of Pippa, Franky’s closest friend, Lawrence and Stasia join Franky in her sticky, summertime search for the yellow-eyed monster haunting their foggy seaside town between classes, shifts at the arcade, and eating popsicles by the pool. Motivated by her unquenchable attraction to Franky, Lawrence allows herself to be pulled in strange directions, trying to appease Franky’s mania. Through the trials of hunting a monster only some of them believe in, Pippa, Lawrence, Stasia, and Franky uncover a town’s legacy of making women answer for men’s violence—and the reliability of urban legends.”
I Make My Own Fun. Hannah Beer. House of Anansi Press. $24.99, 276 pp., ISBN: 9781487014155
I Make My Own Fun
By Hannah Beer
October 2025
“The sinister side of celebrity fandom is inverted in this razor-sharp debut following the descent of the world’s most beloved movie star into a dark and disastrous obsession—perfect for readers of You and My Sister, the Serial Killer.
Everyone knows Marina, the A-list movie star. But very few know Marina, the absolute monster. Years at the top have proved that whatever Marina wants, she gets. But when she meets bartender Anna, Marina discovers something that can’t be bought: Anna’s affection. As Anna remains unmoved, Marina’s advances become more desperate, and her obsession more dangerous.
The price of fame is heavy—and someone will have to pay for it …”
Dead Writers. Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, & Naben Ruthnum. Invisible Publishing. $23.95, 192 pp., ISBN: 9781778430541
Dead Writers
by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, & Naben Ruthnum
March 2025
“In this collaborative fiction project, four writers navigate the protean concept of the “bargain” in novella-length stories. A biographer surveying the career of a “haunted” literary figure, a lovelorn journalist entering into a diabolic covenant, a tourist attempting to stay sober through her holiday travels, and a doctor’s complicity in a colonial scandal: These horror-inflected offerings of existential dread, tainted pasts, and uncertain futures serve as an unbalancing reminder that there is always a high price to pay for the corruption of the soul.”
The Invisible Hotel. Yeji Y. Ham. Anchor Canada. $24.00, 320 pp., ISBN: 9780385698078
The Invisible Hotel
by Yeji Y. Ham
September 2025
“Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, out of her job at a convenience store, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented bones, reminders of what they have all lost to a war that never seems to end. Yewon and her siblings were born in this bathtub—and every year women give birth to new babies in the bathtub.
Now, Yewon’s brother is stationed near the North Korean border, her sister has just undergone a life-changing tragedy, and her mother is constantly worried, her health declining. In crisis and in stasis, Yewon’s dreams of the decrepit hotel lead her to an unsettling truth about her country’s collective heritage.”
Ink of Nightmares
by Jeff Szpirglas (AUTHOR), Andrew P. Barr (illustrator)
sEPTEMBER 2025
“Tanya and Niah lure writer Joel Southland to a local coffee shop to find out his scheme. But soon, customers are collapsing around them, lulled into an unnatural sleep—Southland's (and the evil ink's) doing. When Southland tells Tanya he needs her help to draw the ink back to its origins, it seems her only option. However, the ink is cunning. And it will take all Tanya's smarts to try to trap it...or else she might be trapped herself.
Woven into the main story are other nightmares the ink has been collecting, including a story of a boy haunted by the long hair clogging a drain, two friends hoping to get famous by livestreaming their hot-pepper-eating challenge, and Gory Gary, a gruesome ghoul who pops up instead of Bloody Mary because he's bored. It's a mix of frights and chills and laughs, perfect for middle-grade readers.
The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.”
Ink of Nightmares. Jeff Szpirglas and Andrew P. Barr (illus.). Orca Book Publishers. $14.95, 192 pp., ISBN: 9781459840591
Taaqtumi 2. Various authors. Inhabit Media. $22.95, 184 pp., ISBN: 9781772275834
Taaqtumi 2: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories
by various
September 2025
“This new collection of horror short fiction weaves together contemporary Arctic settings with ancient monsters and mysterious beings that have been said to stalk the tundra for centuries. Featuring authors from across the Canadian Arctic, this new volume of Taaqtumi—an Inuktitut word that means “In the Dark”—reveals just how horrifying the dark can be.
Featuring new fiction from award-winning authors Aviaq Johnston, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley and Jamesie Fournier, as well as new voices in the genre, this collection is perfect for any horror lover.”
The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien. Brit Griffin. Latitude 46. $23.95, 312 pp., ISBN: 9781997529002
The Haunting of Modesto O'Brien
by Brit Griffin
September 2025
“A gothic tale from deep within the boreal forest…
Violence and greed have intruded into a wild and remote land. It’s 1907, and silver fever has drawn thousands of men into a fledgling mining camp in the heart of the wilderness. Modesto O’Brien, fortune-teller and detective, is there too - but he isn’t looking for riches. He’s seeking revenge.
O’Brien soon finds himself entangled with the mysterious Nail sisters, Lucy and Lily. On the run from their past and headed for trouble, Lily turns to O’Brien when Lucy goes missing. But what should have been a straightforward case of kidnapping pulls O’Brien into a world of ancient myths, magic, and male violence.
As he searches for Lucy, O’Brien fears that dark forces are emerging from the ravaged landscape. Mesmerized by a nightmarish creature stalking the wilderness, and haunted by his past, O’Brien struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he faces hard choices about loyalty, sacrifice, and revenge.”
Qallupilluit: The Takers of Children. Louise Flaherty, Neil Christopher, Megan Kyak-Monteith (illus.), Inhabit Media. $19.95, 52 pp., ISBN: 9781772273601
Qallupilluit: The Takers of Children
by Louise Flaherty (author), Neil Christopher (author), Megan Kyak-Monteith (illustrator)
September 2025
“In the Arctic, children are warned about the dangers of mysterious beings that lurk under the ice—the qallupilluit. But one child does not heed the warnings. . . .
David heads to the beach to play on the ice. But he quickly realizes he’s not alone. A webbed hand emerges from the water, and soon David finds himself cornered by sea monsters. David uses his wits and agility to escape them. But when he makes it back to his family, he learns that his little brother is missing—and had followed him to the ice. David races back to the ice to look for his brother, but will he be able to find him and escape the menacing qallupilluit a second time?
Based on creatures from traditional Inuit stories, Qallupilluit: The Takers of Children is a chilling cautionary tale.”