Mind-bending horror: we just can’t get enough. From Backrooms to The X-Files to unusual retellings that challenge everything we think we know about storytelling, there’s something truly perfect about a good horror tale that’s simultaneously fun and mind-bogglingly strange.
So if you want to have your reality rearranged around you, here are five books that will challenge your brain in ways that are by turns surprising, strange, and even heartbreaking.
The Salt Grows Heavy
Fairy tale retellings are among my favorite subgenre of horror and dark fantasy. That’s because they take something that’s seemingly familiar and completely turn it on its head.
With The Salt Grows Heavy, renowned author Cassandra Khaw does exactly that, reinventing The Little Mermaid in ways that are so profoundly weird and gruesome that you’ll never look at the Disney cartoon the same way again.
This surreal novella follows a mermaid mother after her daughters have used their teeth and bloodlust to destroy the kingdom. Now the mother is on the run with a strange plague doctor, and as they explore the nearby forest, they find themselves delving deeper and deeper into ever more unsettling mysteries.
As always, Khaw employs their one-of-a-kind prose style to make this retelling of The Little Mermaid a truly powerful and haunting experience. A quick read that will also stick with you.
White is for Witching
Another book that draws from fairy tale imagery, White Is for Witching is one of those modern gothic stories that will at once enchant and mystify you. Women of the Silver family keep disappearing in their very unusual house, and since the novel employs variations of the usual ghosts and of course haunted house tropes, you can already guess that there’s something highly strange that’s happening to them.
Told from multiple perspectives, including the house itself, and written in the glittering prose for which Oyeyemi is so well known, White Is for Witching is a book like no other, and it will absolutely shift your entire mind (and your heart) by the time you finish it.
Witches of the Wheel
There’s nothing quite like stories about witches, so let’s explore a forthcoming mind-bending tale that features women with mystical powers. Due out in September from Creature Publishing, Witches of the Wheel is Lindsay Merbaum’s latest novel after her fabulous (and fabulously strange) Vampires at Sea, released last year.
Once again, Merbaum knocks it out of the park with a bizarre and beautifully written story of Gold, a teenager with unusual powers. Between the ghosts she can see and an ancient evil rising up, Gold more than has her work cut out for her.
The magic here somehow feels real and surreal at the same time, and the setting of the eponymous Wheel, a literally underground lesbian bar, make this a standout book for 2026.
How to Disappear Completely: A Novel
I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this one, so let me just say it loud and clear: Liz Kerin’s forthcoming novel is amazing. After the release of her haunting vampire duology, Night’s Edge and First Light, I would seriously read anything she writes.
Fortunately, with How to Disappear Completely, I was not disappointed. After witnessing an inexplicable and possibly paranormal event, Hazel’s older sister Kira vanished when they were only teenagers, and the mystery of why her sister left has haunted Hazel ever since.
Years later, an enigmatic podcaster starts a show about the paranormal event that precipitated Kira’s disappearance, and Hazel soon finds herself drawn into the web of mystery all over again. This is a heady blend of The X-Files and 2000s culture in all the best ways, and the Algonquin Anomaly at the center of the book is as mind-bending as it gets.
If you love unique horror with a tinge of science fiction, then this one is most definitely for you. It doesn’t come out until February 2027, but you can absolutely get your pre-orders in now.
Agnes, We're Not Murderers!
A nod to classic gothic tales, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers! is both proud of its literary roots and more than eager to break new ground. This fantastic, frenetic tale follows numerous characters, all of them playing on different tropes of gothic literature. But that doesn’t even begin to explain this out-of-this-world story.
Featuring queer vampires and with nods to everything from Carmilla to Bluebeard to Jane Eyre, there are also plenty of hilarious annotations and asides, and everything about this book pushes the boundaries of what a gothic story can truly be.
An absolute standout for 2026 and a novel that’s more than worthy of a place on your TBR pile.
