4 Terrifying New Releases from Indie and Small Presses in June 2026

After a violent death, Kristina rises again—but she's not the fragile woman who was once abandoned by her family anymore. Now she is boiling over with rage, brimming with power, and hungry for the blood of the very people who were supposed to love her.

With an appetite for vengeance, she sets out on a journey across bloody highways to her hometown in the Australian bush. While her body decays and her mind unravels, she has to wonder if she is meant to forgive, or simply to feed.

A gripping exploration of trauma, this unique tale examines queer identity and found family.

This book is available now from Interstellar Flight Press!

In 1987, 16-year-old Ursula overcomes childhood trauma and years cycling through the care system and lands a job delivering mail at a local art school. She even nabs a bed at a halfway house, as well as some friends, including wild-child Sue.

These new friends invite her to a squat at a house with a horrible history, the Underwood. But at the gathering, Sue's actions and demands become more and more extreme.

Unfortunately, Ursula has always been desperate to be loved, and agrees to her friends horrific dare. This leaves her haunted—literally.

Now, 36 years later, Ursula is a famous yet reclusive sculptor who lives under an assumed identity in London. Her life is upended when a true crime documentarian looking into an unsolved disappearance exposes her true identity.

However, the filmmaker isn't the only one who has tracked Ursula down. As her past and present collide, she must figure out if the monsters are inside her or around her, and if they're finally going to get retribution for the mistakes she's made.

This book is available now from Tin House!

Mississippi, 1927. The town of East Cobb is as close to perfect as it gets. Here in the wealthy all-Black Free Town, the people are unscathed by white oppression.

Thea Elliot and her husband have big ambitions, and they hope to pursue their dreams in East Cobb. But they don't know that this picturesque town is swarming with ghoulish nightmares—ones that only women can see.

Marah is all too familiar with the groanings. She is one of the town's carriers, the women who have the ability to pull traumatic memories from men.

Every man in East Cobb as been freed from their pain, and so the town has flourished, even as the women are haunted by the remnants of these awful memories.

An unexpected death spurs Marah on to find out more about her power, and results in her and Thea's worlds colliding. Now they must face the dark truth behind East Cobb's prosperity, and decide what—and who—will survive.

This book is now available for pre-order, and will be released on June 9th by Bindery Books!

Milo St. Lawrence is a retired auto body mechanic who only has weeks left to live. Turning down hospice care in California, he returns home to the New England town where his family was destroyed.

As the cancer slowly kills him, disjointed memories begin to haunt him. He becomes convinced that there is something buried deep in the darkness of the past that he must face before he dies.

Trapped in his hospital bed inside his half-rotten house, repressed memories from his childhood rise to the surface. He begins to remember his siblings' strange sicknesses, the rigidity of his parents' Catholicism, and how a cult-like devotion insisted upon prayer over medical care.

He remembers how his estranged sister, Marie, would talk to an imaginary friend in the living room. And eventually, his parents began to speak to it, too.

And he remembers the night he ran away—the night Marie had told him about the caterpillar man and his strange hookah device that drained the life from the St. Lawrence children.

With nothing left but his engineering skills and the resolve of a dying man, Milo sets out to modify the parasite's alien device and siphon its life out of it before he is the creature's last offering.

This book is now available for pre-order, and will be released on June 16th by Death's Head Press!