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

Joseph Fink—the creator of Welcome to Nightvale and Alice Isn't Dead—delivers a gripping new horror novella, complete with 15 original illustrations from Night Vale artist Jessica Hayworth.

In the middle of the night, an injured man checks into an isolated roadside hotel. He's fleeing from something inescapable—something he can't quite explain.

But he'll do his best to describe to the hotel proprietor exactly how his life fell to pieces.

It all started with his wife—subtle changes at first, like smiles that weren't exactly right. Then came the sudden violence.

Therapy seemed like it might work, until it didn't.

Now he believes an awful influence has glommed onto him. One that never forces, but simply suggests and coazes people to follow their worst impulses.

He wanders through the country now, a fugitive desperate to free himself of this strange evil. But can he ever run far enough to escape it?

This book is available now from Podium Publishing!

Cinnamon Christine Carmichael has no recollection of the murders—at least not at first. But between her bloodstained hands, the whispers swirling around in her head, at the smile stretched across her best friend Hedda's face, she knows enough.

Something dangerous has been unleashed, and they're what's helping it get stronger.

When two teens are immolated in a corn maze, a crowd does nothing but watch. It's just the latest in a string of ritualistic killings.

Over the course of his career, Sheriff Henry McGinty has seen a lot of crazy things, but this takes the cake. So he brings in Sister Eve.

Eve can see echoes of the dead and peeks into the future. But her visions this time are fragmented and wrong, as if she's being blocked.

Something old and evil is keeping her from seeing the truth. And it wears her mother's face, reincarnated in the body of a teenage girl.

With Halloween approaching, Cinnamon's coven hurries to try and complete a ritual that could see Hell on earth. And Eve, Henry, and irreverent deputy Fink may be the only ones who can stop it.

This book is now available for pre-order, and will be released on September 8th by Rising Action!

This inventive tale gives The Great Gatsby a ghostly, queer reimagining.

Daisy Buchanan is found dead in her abandoned mansion in 1955. Her daughter, Mel, knows well enough that she'd been gone for much longer.

But was it murder that finally got Daisy, or the slow poison of alcohol, abuse, and helplessness?

When Mel pays a visit to the estate, she encounters Daisy's ghost, looking as she did at 23. And with her is the bloody yet charming phantom of Jay Gatsby.

In order to free her mother, Mel has to wade through old family secrets, even as Gatsby's house feeds on unfulfilled love.

This book is now available for pre-order, and will be released on September 15th by Creature Publishing!

Derbyshire, England, 1642.

Jane Vernon spends most of her time trying to keep the hungry spirit that lives in Elden Hole sated. Its a curse that she and her siblings have inherited from generations of their family.

But every time she gives the spirit a sacrifice, she gets more and more reluctant to feed it another. And the offering of a traveling merchant makes her question her loyalty to her family, and the awful duty she has upheld.

When wealthy wanderer Isaac Latimer arrives searching for his cousin, Sarah—last seen in the company of an older man—Jane's guilty conscience sees her joining his quest. Suddenly, her life is unburdened and free, and she begins to realize nothing is as it seems.

But the spirit's hunder still grows, and only a Vernon can choose between death and damnation.

This book is now available for pre-order, and will be released on September 22nd by Ruadán Books!