Sapphic Horror Novels of Love, Lust, and Terror

If you’ve always been fascinated by the mysteries of the deep oceans and enjoy vividly visceral prose, you’ll probably have a good time with Julia Armfield’s sapphic debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea that tells the moving story of a relationship between two women, impacted by an unforeseen tragedy. 

Miri and Leah are a happily-married couple until one of Leah’s deep-sea dives goes disastrously wrong—while she eventually surfaces alive, she is forever changed by the encounter and starts behaving strangely, even as Miri mourns the camaraderie they shared before. 

Told from alternating perspectives, Our Wives Under the Sea is a short, surreal and deeply elegiac work.

If you’re looking for something compulsively readable—something you can spend the night reading when you really should be sleeping—you must check out Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca.

It’s an experimental, epistolary novella that begins in an internet chat room in the early 2000s and follows two strangers who get into a kinky relationship together and slowly succumb to their forbidden urges and desires. An unabashed exploration of lust, perversions, and boundaries, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is filled with shocking twists and turns and makes for a rather feral read. 

Be warned—this book does get quite gruesome and isn’t for the faint of heart.

If you love short story collections, you can’t go wrong with Rae Wilde’s electrifying book, boldly titled I Do Not Apologize for My Position on Men. From cosmic horror to falling in love with a hurricane, the stories here are strange, poignant and beautiful, and of course, filled with monsters. 

Seductive and enticing, I Do Not Apologize for My Position on Men is perfect for anyone looking for stories of survival, rage and revenge. It’s unsettling and entertaining in equal measure.

If you love vampires and fantasy horror novels with a historical setting, add V.E. Schwab’s stellar novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil to your TBR pile. Set across three different time periods, all brought to life with atmospheric prose, it follows toxic lesbian vampires through a mesmerizing journey of hunger, desire and survival, accompanied by the lure of immortality. 

With morally grey characters, a slow-paced plot and exquisite prose, this book will devour you in the best possible way. And it’s certainly one of V.E. Schwab’s best books yet.

This one’s again for the short fiction lovers—an anthology devoted sorely to tales of sapphic horror by established and emerging writers, successfully funded on Kickstarter. Each of the eighteen stories are unique, filled with bizarre and fantastical elements, exploring queer love, longing and desire in all its quietly horrific forms. 

There’s even a horror story in here by yours truly, involving Tarot cards and a dysfunctional relationship!

During the pandemic, Alice Isn’t Dead quickly became my favorite podcast. 

Made by the same creators of Welcome to Nightvale, the podcast followed Keisha, a truck driver, on a long road trip across America to find her missing wife, Alice. Though presumed dead, Keisha refuses to give up and is soon pulled into a paranormal conspiracy. 

At its heart, Alice Isn’t Dead is a stunningly crafted tale of sapphic horror that’s now available in the format of a novel—you can read it or listen to the audiobook, depending on your preferences.

Finally, Rory Power’s devastatingly beautiful book, Wilder Girls, is extremely gay and unfolds in an all-girls boarding school on an island taken over by a mysterious plague. Think Lord of the Flies but with a feminist dystopia twist. 

There’s gory horror, female friendship, some romance and a lot of blood and guts thrown in—that will keep you on the edge of the seat the whole time with a gut-wrenching finale. Overall, an arresting and poetic read.