Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.
This horrifying collection delivers a nightmare buffet of haunted houses, sinister doppelgängers, cursed objects, and twisted terrors you’ll never see coming. From a family trapped in a dream home that won’t let go, to a cycling trip gone horribly wrong, to internet memes that summon madness, each story drags you deeper into fear. Malevolent spirits, ancient evils, and grotesque murders await within. Brutal, bizarre, and darkly unforgettable, these tales prove once you step inside, there’s no way out.
Let’s get short, sweet, and bloody, dear readers. If you can’t handle the tension and fear of a full-length horror novel or movie, reading a short story will take only a fraction of the time. Bite-sized frights are the horror short story collection’s specialty. Especially now, as we get comfortable during this Fall season, a horror short story is perfect for the vibes.
I’ve always lauded short story collections, in every genre, and I feel they are constantly overlooked and unappreciated. Horror short stories, particularly, are fantastic at making you feel so many heightened emotions in a short amount of time. As with any collection, it allows you to sample all the talents and interests a writer possesses. If you’re a horror fan of many styles and tropes, a collection usually offers a bit of everything. The range in choice—whether you read in order or not—allows for the opportunity to sample and discover.
My fellow rioter, Andy Minshew, did a fantastic job writing an August roundup of 6 of the Best Horror Short Story Collections. In the service of avoiding overlap, and by focusing on the word “recent,” my selection of horror short story collection recommendations will highlight works that have been published within the last couple of months, and include one upcoming title.
6 Recent and Upcoming Horror Short Story Collections
Issues with Authority by Nadia Bulkin
Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Nadia Bulkin returns with a second collection that will rock your spooky season world. Bulkin’s collection is a whirlwind of stories about transformation and power, from a beauty pageant contestant who grows increasingly paranoid after a skin disease begins eating holes in her body, to a story about paracontagions that infect viewers depending on the type of media they watch (a phenomenon that the government is trying desperately to control).
This collection—along with this whole list of collections and indeed with most horror collections—dabbles in the paranoia and abuses of power happening in our everyday lives. Bulkin takes the dial of these concepts and turns it up to the max.
Midnight Somewhere by Johnny Compton (December 2025)
Johnny Compton has been on a hell of a spree of producing brilliant horror tales, with The Spite House and Devils Kill Devils both receiving high praise and accolades. Midnight Somewhere is an upcoming collection by Compton, which includes 21 stories ranging from mysterious to downright murderous. A man gets in a car that will take him anywhere in time, including to the moment he made the worst mistake of his life. A film that is seemingly harmless starts to cause self-harm in those who watch it. A woman tries to bring her dead lover back to life in a ritual that includes attacking his very corpse. Ever since Spite House, I’ve been eager for more work, and this collection seems like it will be perfect to weather the dead of winter.
Uncertain Sons and other Stories by Thomas Ha
I have been a huge fan of Thomas Ha’s short fiction ever since reading the utterly eerie “Window Boy,” originally published in Clarkesworld in August 2023. “Window Boy” went on to be on numerous award finalist lists and was reprinted in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2024. Ha is a true expert in brewing dread, along with encapsulating that beautifully uncomfortable quiet horror.
Uncertain Sons is sure to be a collection that reverberates through the horror scene, and if you haven’t read Ha’s work before, you need to remedy that ASAP.
Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper
Hailey Piper continues to rip a joyful bloody path through the horror scene, and I am pretty sure I squealed with delight when I first heard of her collection Teenage Girls Can be Demons.
This collection comprises 13 stories of women-centered horror fiction, exploring girlhood and coming-of-age tales that will raise the hairs on your neck to glorious attention. From a Halloween prank going horribly wrong to mutant adolescents, this is the perfect nail-biting read for the Halloween season.
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell
Samanta Schweblin is a master of telling the unsettling and unforgettable short story. Ever since Fever Dream was published in 2014, I’ve been in awe of her work. Good and Evil is a collection of six stories that has us confront the horrors and monsters that live inside ourselves. From a mother who returns from the lake outside her house—only to wish she can go back—to a woman on her deathbed who calls an old friend for the first time since a terrible accident, these stories ask us to look into the darkness and hold its gaze.
Tell Me Yours I’ll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten
As I’ve already mentioned Kristina Ten’s amazing work in numerous posts, this choice is a no-brainer. Ten’s collection has already amassed recommendations from many writers, including the horror titan Stephen Graham Jones.
I am absolutely feral for the story “The Dizzy Room,” originally published in Nightmare Magazine, but any story Ten writes is a winner. Her work is unsettling, nostalgic, elegiac, and poetic. It’s the perfect eerie read for settling in by a fire with a hot drink.
Support the Short Story Form in All Genres
I recently read a thread on Bluesky that held the short story collection in a bleak light. The poster claimed that one should not publish too many short story collections; best to leave readers hungry for more. For lack of a better word, I find that whole idea to be utter poppycock. The short story form has been a part of storytelling, be it oral or written, since time immemorial. We certainly didn’t tell Ernest Hemingway or Lydia Davis to chill out with their writing, so why argue it for the short story writers who are kicking ass right now?
Support the short story and the short story collection, dear reader, and support the writers who create them. Let them forge new paths, in whatever genre, to their hearts’ content, be it one collection or dozens. As readers, as people, we are better off for it.
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