The Grimoire: 30 Spine-tingling Titles for Halloween 2025, Part 2
In Part 2 of this year’s roundup of spine-tingling titles for Halloween 2025, we bring you anthropological vampires, family demons, cannibalism, witchcraft, persecution, science gone wrong, bunnies, a Martian mystery, a village better left abandoned, and so much more to scare you senseless this spooky season.
October 8, 2025
Hemo Sapiens. Emily A. Weedon, Dundurn Press. $25.99, 336 pp., ISBN: 9781459755673
Hemo Sapiens
by Emily A. Weedon
September 2025
“These women are out for blood.
Detective Luke Stockton is preparing for his first child with his wife, Beatrice, but balancing work and home is a challenge as she is behaving with increasing strangeness. Beatrice begins to frequent a medspa offering mysterious prenatal checkups, leech treatments, and vampire facials. And, against his will, Luke finds himself irresistibly drawn to the spa’s sophisticated owner, Cleo, who has a deadly secret to keep.
The pressure builds for Luke as he investigates a series of murders involving exsanguinated runaway boys. Trailing a perplexing killer, and bent on protecting his wife and their child, Luke is thrust into a shadowy, erotic world of wealth, subterfuge, and danger. And the closer he gets to the truth, the more danger he courts for himself and his family.
Hemo Sapiens is an audacious and bloodthirsty fairy tale, pitting one man against a community beyond good and evil, in a modern tale of intrigue and female sexuality.”
Eerie Whispers. Brian Baker. Dundurn Press. $26.99, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781459754744
Eerie Whispers: Exploring Canada's Reluctant Relationship with its Ghostly Lore
by Brian Baker
September 2025
“Why are Canadians afraid of ghosts?
Canada’s paranormal roots run deep. We tell ghost stories around flickering campfires and share unexplained encounters with family and friends. Yet our polite, risk-averse nation often buries these experiences, rarely encouraging them in the places we live or in our arts and entertainment. Fear of stigma and discomfort with the unknown — especially death — keepthe supernatural in the shadows. We allow only flirtations with ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, mostly at Halloween.
Eerie Whispers explores Canada’s haunted history, drawing from the diverse folklore of its immigrant communities and the traditional stories of Indigenous Peoples. It asks why Canadians, unlike Americans or the British, are reluctant to celebrate this part of our culture. Brian Baker encourages us to embrace the uncanny and find the courage needed to amplify our nation’s supernatural voice.”
The Hunger We Pass Down. Jen Sookfong Lee. McClelland & Stewart. $26.00, 376 pp., ISBN: 9780771012853
The Hunger We Pass Down
by Jen Sookfong Lee
september 2025
“Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn’t remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone—or something—has been doing her chores for her.
Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history—beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family’s demons—both real and subconscious, old and new—are about to become impossible to ignore.
Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle—heroism, depravity, or both.”
The Butcher's Daughter. David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark. Hell's Hundred. $25.95, 418 pp., ISBN: 9781641296434
The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett
by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark
April 2025
“The story of the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd has gripped fans across literary, stage, and screen renditions—but little has been told of Mrs. Lovett, Todd’s partner in crime. Until now.
Enclosed herewith: a bloodcurdling correspondence of horror and intrigue, based on the original Victorian penny dreadful that started it all.
London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.
As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything. A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.”
The Witch of Willow Sound. Vanessa F. Penney. ECW Press. $24.95, 320 pp., ISBN: 9781770418424
The Witch of Willow Sound: A Novel
by Vanessa F. Penney
September 2025
“A feminist gothic tale with a tough-as-nails female protagonist who must find her elderly aunt, long suspected of being a witch.
Madeline is missing. Ordered to find her, Madeline’s estranged niece Fade must return to the lonely forest of Willow Sound, Nova Scotia. There, Fade discovers her aunt’s once-cozy cottage empty and rotting. The ominous smell of something burnt hangs in the air.
In her search for answers, Fade clashes with the people of Grand Tea, a nearby village struggling under the shadow of a massive, looming rock that could tip and crush them all at any time. For generations, they’ve invented bizarre lore about Madeline, calling her a witch and blaming her for their misfortunes. They’ve had more misfortunes than ever lately. And a hurricane is coming.
Inspired by real East Coast traditions and witch lore, The Witch of Willow Sound is a modern gothic tale that explores family lost and found and throws firelight on dark truths about what societies do with the people, and the past, they don’t want.”
The Wax Child. Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken (trans.), Book*hug Press. $24.95, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781771669726
The Wax Child
By Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken (translator)
September 2025
“From the internationally celebrated author of The Employees and My Work comes an extraordinary, haunting tale of witchcraft and persecution.
In seventeenth-century Denmark, unmarried noblewoman Christenze Kruckow and several other women are accused of witchcraft. They are rumoured to be possessed by the Devil, who comes to them in the form of a tall, headless man and gives them dark powers. It is said they perform unchristian acts and can steal people’s happiness, cause pestilence, illness, or even death. And once the rumour of witchcraft takes hold, they are all in danger of the stake.
Narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze one dark night in 1620, The Wax Child is an unsettling, dizzying horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of pre-modern Europe.
Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of infamous witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland. Full of lush, vivid storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn weaves in quotes from original sources, such as letters, court documents, magic spells, and Scandinavian grimoires.”
The Guest Children. Patrick Tarr. HarperCollins Publishers. $24.99, 272 pp., ISBN: 9781443473965
The Guest Children
by Patrick Tarr
AUgust 2025
“Not all hauntings are confined to houses
With the mounting terror of the German Blitz on London in 1940, thousands of British “guest children” are sent abroad to escape the bombing. Among them are Michael and Frances Hawksby, who are shipped off to Canada to stay with relatives. Years later, as WW II finally comes to an end, their surviving family members realize that no one has heard from them since.
Randall Sturgess wanted to do his part in the war but was forced to stay home to look after his troubled and unstable younger brother, Edward. Impoverished, shamed as a coward, and running out of work options as veterans return home, Randall takes a job investigating the disappearance of the Hawksby children. Reluctantly leaving Edward behind, Randall follows the children’s trail to the wilds of northern Ontario, where he finds an isolated and ramshackle resort called Glass Point Lodge. Here he discovers the secretive aunt and uncle who took in the young Hawksbys, along with an odd collection of seemingly permanent guests, none of whom are willing to tell Randall the truth about the missing children.
Plagued with vivid nightmares about the war, and troubled by dark visions and a persistent feeling that he’s being watched, Randall searches the imposing woods and lake for any trace of Michael and Frances. Convinced that something terrible has happened to them, Randall delves ever deeper into the mysteries of the lodge, its inhabitants, and the long-buried memories of his childhood, not realizing that the darkest secrets he unearths may be his own.”
Horsefly. Mireille Gagné, Pablo Strauss (trans.). Coach House Books. $24.95, 160 pp., ISBN: 9781552454992
Horsefly
by Mireille Gagné, Pablo Strauss (translator)
May 2025
“A chilling tale about what happens when we mess with nature.
In 1942, a young entomologist, Thomas, is sent to a remote island to work on biological weapons for the Allied military. The scientists live like prisoners while they produce anthrax and look for the perfect virus carrier among the island’s many insects.
Sixty years later, in the same region of Quebec, a heat wave unleashes swarms of horseflies while humans fall prey to strange flights of rage. Theodore is living a simple life, working double shifts and drinking to forget, when a horsefly bite stirs him from his apathy. He impulsively kidnaps his grandfather, whose dementia has him living in the past on Grosse Île.
The horseflies, meanwhile, know a few secrets…
Loosely based on historical fact, Horsefly is a terrifying tale about the ways in which we try to dominate nature, and how nature will, inevitably, wreak retribution upon us.”
We Love You, Bunny. Mona Awad. Scribner Canada. $34.99, 496 pp., ISBN: 9781668098486
We Love You, Bunny
By Mona Awad
September 2025
“The highly anticipated follow up to the viral sensation Bunny, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny, dark, and delirious novel set in the Bunny-verse—a world that Margaret Atwood declared “soooo genius.”
In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences.
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.
Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.”
The Longest Night. Lauren Carter. Freehand Books. $24.95, 312 pp., ISBN: 9781990601958
The Longest Night
by Lauren Carter
September 2025
“A taut and uncanny thriller about one girl’s search for home, melding time travel, magic realism, horror, and literary suspense.
One forty-below December night, 18-year-old Ash Hayes finds herself locked out of her home in rural Minnesota. She seeks shelter from the freezing cold with neighbours she hasn’t yet met.
The next morning, everything is off-kilter – the house has no mirrors or modern technology, and all the windows blocked. When Ash tries to call her parents, their numbers are disconnected. One of the strange inhabitants is a doctor, who offers Ash a terrible form of help and won’t take no for an answer. In her efforts to get out of the house, Ash finds herself transported to an even stranger place and time, setting off a chain of events that connect with (and alter) her past and her future.
For fans of Mona Awad and Emily St. John Mandel, The Longest Night is a high-stakes, genre-twisting story about searching for something stable in a world where reality is ever-changing and can’t be trusted.”
Exiles. Mason Coile. G.P. Putnam's Sons. $37.99, 224 pp., ISBN: 9780593851630
Exiles
by Mason Coile
September 2025
“A terrifying locked-room mystery from the author of William--this time set on a remote outpost on Mars.
The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray—the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing.
In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories--especially their own--to get to the truth.
Exiles is a terrifying, taut, one-sitting read, and Mason Coile once again blends science fiction and psychological horror to engage some of humanity’s deepest questions.”
Even More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia
by Vernon Oickle
July 2025
“Are you haunted by ghostly figures who may or may not be there? Do you hear footsteps outside your bedroom door even though you are certain you are alone in your house? Do you hear voices even though you don’t see anyone? Do your doors open and close on their own? Do you hear laughing or crying, or music playing, or people calling your name, but you can’t find the source? Do inanimate objects move about on their steam or fly through the air?
If you answer yes to even one of these questions, then Even More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia will make you want to call a friend.
Picking up where 2019’s More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia left off, veteran ghost storyteller and author Vernon Oickle brings to life even more of Nova Scotia’s chilling tales of the paranormal, many of which are being shared publicly for the first time within the pages of this book.”
More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia. Vernon Oickle. MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc. $21.95, 170 pp., ISBN: 9781772761924
Lowfield. Mark Sampson. Now or Never Publishing. $29.95, 347 pp., ISBN: 9781989689813
Lowfield
by Mark Sampson
April 2025
“Riley Fuller, a police officer sidelined by the devastating loss of three colleagues in a tragic shooting, seeks solace in rural Prince Edward Island as he lays claim to his family's ancestral property—an ancient, dilapidated house known locally as Applegarth. Eager for a fresh start and relief from his traumatic past, Riley's hopes are soon dashed as he uncovers the dark secrets hidden within the very walls of the Victorian-era mansion. Soon, he realizes that Applegarth is merely a harbinger of something far more sinister—a malevolent force lurking within the nearby abandoned village of Lowfield, its ominous presence intricately entwined with the rich history of PEI itself.”
The First Thousand Trees. Premee Mohamed. ECW Press. $19.95, 156 pp., ISBN: 9781770417342
The First Thousand Trees
by Premee Mohamed
September 2025
“The final instalment in The Annual Migration of Clouds trilogy
Henryk Mandrusiak, finding nothing left for him in his community following his best friend Reid’s departure, travels through the devastated land in search of a new place to call home.
After making a grievous mistake that ended in death, Henryk Mandrusiak feels increasingly ostracized within his own community, and after the passing on of his parents and the departure of his best friend, Reid, there is little left to tie him to the place he calls home. Henryk does something he never expected: He sets out into the harsh wilds alone, in search of far-flung family. He finds his uncle’s village, but making a life for himself in this unfriendly new place — rougher and more impoverished than the campus where he grew up — isn’t easy. Henryk strives to carve out a place of his own but learns that some corners of his broken world are darker than he could have imagined.
This stunning novella concludes the story Mohamed started in The Annual Migration of Clouds and continued in We Speak Through the Mountain, bleaker than ever but still in search of a spark of hope in the climate apocalypse.”
Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories
Lucky’s Grove. H. Russell Wakefield, Seth (illus.), Biblioasis. $9.95, 64 pp., ISBN: 9781771966733
Lucky’s Grove
by H. Russell Wakefield, Seth (illustrator)
November 2025
“In preparation for the upcoming Christmas celebrations, the servants of wealthy Mr Braxton unwittingly cut a tree from the sacred grounds of Lucky’s Grove. As the guests arrive, injuries, illness, and mysterious occurrences soon plague Abingdale Hall—with the worst to come on Christmas Day.”
Lady Ferry. Sarah Orne Jewett, Seth (illus.), Biblioasis. $9.95, 64 pp., ISBN: 9781771966719
Lady Ferry
by Sarah Orne Jewett, Seth (illustrator)
November 2025
“When young Marcia is sent to stay with relatives, she’s drawn to their houseguest, Lady Ferry: a mysterious old woman who wanders the gardens, with an impossibly long memory. Everyone has rumours to share, and Marcia soon wonders if Lady Ferry is cursed to live forever—or if she’s even alive at all.”
The Mistress in Black. Rosemary Timperley, Seth (illus.), Biblioasis. $9.95, 64 pp., ISBN: 9781771966726
The Mistress in Black
by Rosemary Timperley, Seth (illustrator)
November 2025
“From the moment Miss Anderson begins her new teaching job, she encounters ghostly figures and a strange scent of smoke. Whispers of arson and murder circulate among the staff, but Miss Anderson soon discovers there might be more to the tragic story of the woman in black.”