The best contemporary horror novels written by women

Decrepit old mansions, terrifying secrets, ailing young women, and mysterious men are staples of the horror genre. But this was the first Gothic horror novel I read with a Mexican woman as the protagonist. Noemí Taboada’s recently-married cousin Catalina sends an ominous letter claiming she’s being poisoned and begging for help. After some persuasion from her father, Noemí travels to High Place, the decaying mansion Catalina now calls home, to find out what’s happening to her cousin. Noemí is a wonderful main character, smart, lively, and never passive. The novel reminds me of the Hammer horror films I loved to watch, but addresses issues like racism and eugenics that those old movies seldom touched. It’s a compelling and spooky read. 

It’s 1980. Cleveland, Ohio is falling into decay, and some of the young women living in Phoebe Shaw’s neighborhood become known as the Rust Maidens as their bodies slowly degrade into rusted metal and jagged glass. I’ve read body horror before, but never like this. Kiste has a beautiful and lyrical prose style, and I particularly love her compassion toward her characters. While she doesn’t shy away from the more horrific aspects of her story, she never forgets the humanity of the Rust Maidens as they transform. She also captures the pain of the friends and family the Maidens leave behind. This is Kiste’s first novel, and though I’ve enjoyed all her work, I think it’s still one of her best. 

I’m a sucker for an addictive, epic horror novel, and Tananarive Due delivers with this book. Angela Toussaint inherits her late grandmother Marie’s old house (the “good house” of the title) and returns to her hometown of Sacajawea, WA. At first, she seems content there even if a few of the townspeople have a way of reminding her she’s the only Black woman in town. But after a tragedy shatters Angela’s life and horrific deaths become a regular occurrence in the town, it becomes clear her Gramma Marie passed down far more than the house. Due’s prose is so vivid that at times I felt like I was inside Angela’s head, or walking around the Good House myself. This is the perfect scary book to lose yourself in on a rainy fall day. 

Alma Katsu is a brilliant writer of historical horror, and in The Hunger, she focuses on the tragedy that befell the group of pioneers known as the Donner Party in the mid-1800s. History is a bit of a spoiler here because if you’re familiar with the real-life story, you already know things aren’t going to end well for the majority of the characters. But Katsu’s imaginative take on what happened to them is still gripping and chilling. She balances multiple points of view extremely well and manages to make a familiar tale so compelling that I missed subway stops while playing the “Just one more page” game. 

Cherie Priest is a very versatile writer, and this horror novel is one of her best. I’ve lent copies of Family Plot to people and never gotten them back. Dahlia, whose father owns a salvage company, takes a team of coworkers to an old mansion to strip all the valuable stuff they can find before it’s torn down. But there are far more things in—and around—the house than they know, and those things have a way of making themselves known during the nights the crew spends at the mansion. Dahlia is a wonderful, tough, no-nonsense main character, and parts of the novel gave me the “Alone in the house late at night” creeps.