The best books by BIPOC writers that will scare the living daylights out of you

I had already sold my novel when my publisher highly recommended that I read this book, which—like my own novel—is a modern retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I devoured it in two sittings.

Tsai’s story is a biracial, queer, gender-fluid retelling that modernizes and expands Shelley’s themes of alienation and the dangers of unchecked scientific experimentation.

While Tsai explores such weighty themes as gender identity, racism, and medical ethics, there is no skimping on the horror that will haunt your dreams.

Gabino Iglesias has become a phenomenon in horror through a lot of hustle and plain hard work. His 2022 novel cemented his reputation as the king of border horror.

This novel follows the fate of Mario, a man broken by debt due to his family’s crushing medical bills. With a failing marriage, he reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, agreeing to do one last job hijacking a cartel’s cash shipment before it can reach Mexico.

Mario reluctantly works with his meth-addicted friend and a cartel insider. To make this dangerous endeavor worse, enter supernatural horrors that shocked me—and I am not easily shocked.

Is there blood? Of course! Gore? Plenty! Monsters and demons? Yes! You are guaranteed to lose sleep after reading this novel.

H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896, is one of his most intriguing—and frightening. Moreau has created human hybrid beings via surgical experimentation on live animals.

In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s retelling of the Wells classic, she goes further than the original’s philosophical themes by exploring the political, sociological, and cultural conflicts that arise from colorism, colonialism, and sexism.

In a fascinating twist on Wells’s narrative, she sets her novel in 19th-century Mexico during the Caste War of Yucatán, when the indigenous Maya people rebelled against the Mexicans and Europeans who subjugated them to work their ranches and farms. 

She also centers much of her tale on Moreau’s hybrid beings. It is, quite simply, a thrilling novel that is as horrifying as it is thought-provoking.

V. (Violet) Castro’s debut novel, released in 2021, put her on the horror map, and for good reason.

I loved how she blended Mexican legend and culture to tell a supernatural horror story that is rich in detail, dialogue, and dark humor. The setting is a Texas wedding held on a renovated farm.

But very bad things start to happen, all seemingly tied to a legend of a 1950s murder of a Mexican farmworker. But—so people say—the woman’s death piqued the interest of the Aztec Goddess of Death, who pledges herself to the murdered woman.

Castro’s expert storytelling upends classic tropes to make this book an exhilarating and frightening literary ride that is smart and timely.

When a bookseller handed Jordan Peele’s anthology to me, I smiled and said: “I’ll take it!” Perhaps best known for his hit film, Get Out, I trusted Peele’s sense of horror. And I was not disappointed.

This collection brings together 19 tales by some of our best Black horror writers. It begins with a hilarious and grim story by the great N. K. Jemisin about a Black cop who abuses his power with the help of supernatural visions that assist him in targeting his next victim.

The horror hits just keep coming as we read frightening tales by the likes of Lesley Nneka Arimah, Violet Allen, and L. D. Lewis. I would not be shocked if this anthology gets adapted as a television series.