Before Paloma was murdered, she was the most legendary curandera in all of Mexico. Journalist Zoe has arrived in the mountain town of San Felipe to investigate the healer’s death and seeks out her cousin Feliciana. Before her untimely demise, Paloma taught Feliciana the secrets of her trade, but Feliciana struggles to be accepted as a healer in her community. As the women get to know each other, Zoe sees parts of her own story mirrored in Feliciana’s, parts that are painful to confront. A witchy premise generally hooks me, especially if it promises to examine feminine power and patriarchy. This book stares femicide in Mexico directly in the face, and that makes this a must-read for me.

In the 1940s, in El Paso, Texas, Nena is a disillusioned teen dreaming of a different life when a mysterious nun shows up and says, “Get in, loser. We’re going time traveling.” That’s how Nena ends up in Colonial Mexico. In the present, Nena is an old woman in the care of her niece, Marta, and she decides to casually drop some lore on her out of the blue: she possesses special gifts, she’s traveled through time, and she left a daughter in the distant past. Sensing that something is stirring in her that she can’t exactly explain, Marta agrees to help Nena search for her daughter. It’s a journey that will change both women forever. 

Fernanda and Annelisa are best friends of the practically-sisters and big-scary-secret-keeping variety, and they’re bored with life at the Delta Bilingual Academy. They decide to make their own fun, pushing the envelope with increasingly bizarre rituals that include worship of a bejeweled god of their making. As they flirt with disaster and danger, their literature teacher is sliding towards a break with reality. How do those storylines converge? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. 

I could tell you precisely what this book is about, but instead I’m going to pepper you with the buzzwords and phrases that reeled me in. An isolated desert town. A haunted Spanish hacienda. A woman made clairvoyant by a terrible accident. A severed hand. Ghosts and monsters. Chupacabras. A creepy groundskeeper. Queer ballerinas. Pre-hispanic folklore. I don’t think I’m fully ready for this book, and I’ll need to breathe through the body horror, but it sounds too good not to give it a go.

Related: I love this Library Journal interview with the author, where the trans and first-gen Chicana author describes speculative horror’s “unique ability to make literal the horrors and trauma that people must endure as part of their everyday lives.”

Ever since her mother died, journalist Briar Thorn has tried very hard to convince herself that the scary things that go on in her decaying Victorian greystone are just manifestations of her grief. When she begins to look into the serial killer who’s claimed the lives of over 50 women in Chicago, a stranger reveals to Bri that her nightmares and visions are the key to stopping the killer. 

I was introduced to Cynthia Pelayo through her deliciously creepy collection Lotería, and that’s how I learned that she has been that girl for a minute. She has a great online presence where she shares tips and insights on horror, publishing, craft, and infectious Boricua pride.

The Walking Dead meets Yellowjackets, you say? Well alright then! Flora and her brother Cain are alive six months into a global rabies outbreak that turns people into zombies. With their mom dead, their dad missing, and few options at their disposal, they decide to leave L.A. and head to Northern California in the hopes of finding a safe haven at their family’s cabin. My favorite part of this survival story is that Flora isn’t the kick-ass tough girl type, but a softer creative thrown into an impossible situation and rising to the challenge. Strength and grit come in many flavors!

“Do you guys ever think about dying?” I do, and it’s not a bad thing; I just find a lot of comfort in my culture’s death-related rituals when loss inevitably happens. I’m gathering goods for my Dia de Muertos altar as we speak and, like Enriquez, have always been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries. Enter this book.

It’s a collection of essays that Enriquez was inspired to write after the passing of a friend’s mother caused her to reflect on cemeteries and the concept of resting places. She traveled through North and South America, Europe, and Australia to visit places like the catacombs in Paris, Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery, the Recoleta in Buenos Aires, and more, resulting in this part travelogue, part memoir investigating the history and architecture of each cemetery as well as its ghosts, its custodians, and of course, its dead. Any book from this horror maven is a big deal, but this is the one I’m gifting myself for my birthday this month. I may even read it in a cemetery.

When Ceci’s stepfather passes away, she moves back to her mother’s hometown. Santa Aguas is steeped in the lore of a wronged witch called La Cegua, the ghost of a creepy woman wandering lonely roads at night to lure her victims to their death. (I read that and thought, “Oh, like La Llorona!” But bruuuh. La Cegua is La Llorona with an extra serving of skull-headed nightmare fuel). When Ceci and her mother move into an abandoned manor rumored to be cursed by La Cegua, she finds herself drawn to the spectral woman she’s supposed to fear…

I have been craving more suburban horror since Alyssa Cole’s When No Is Watching, and this one explores themes of systemic racism, identity, and the cost of assimilation. Married couple Sol and Alice move into a swanky gated community where the neighbors seem friendly. Okay, maybe they’re a little too friendly, and the homeowner’s association is a little pushy. But surely that’s normal… right? Then the dread begins to creep in as what starts as annoying microaggressions grows into something more sinister. Then Alice discovers the journal of a prior resident of their house, and the ease with which she and Sol got the house in the first place starts to make awful, terrifying sense.