Books Horror Highlights Ancient Gods and Arachnids: Horror Highlights for December 2025 Add a little horror to your holiday reading list! By Emily C. Hughes | Published on December 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share While December is a slow month for publishing as a whole, and especially for horror publishing, you’d be a fool not to keep an eye on the month’s new books, lest they sneak up behind you in a dark alley. Here are five I’m particularly excited about. Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher (Dec 1, 47north) Any new T. Kingfisher horror book pole-vaults to the top of my TBR pile (I like her fantasy very much as well, but horror always takes priority). This novella follows Selena, a woman fleeing a bad living situation for her late aunt’s desert home. Along with her dog, Copper, Selena starts to adapt to desert life—meeting her neighbors, making friends, and adjusting to a completely new ecosystem. But there’s something watching from the underbrush: an ancient god known as Snake-Eater. And it wants something from Selena—something her aunt promised it. One thing Kingfisher does especially well is writing the natural world in a way that’s reverent but not overly romantic—I loved her descriptions of the Appalachian woods in The Twisted Ones, and I can’t wait to see what she does with a whole new biome here. Plus, as with most Kingfisher novels, readers can expect an exceedingly charming cast of characters and a very, very good dog. Down Came the Spiders by Ally Russell (Dec 2, Scholastic) Now that I’m an adult, I have a healthy respect for spiders, even if I’d prefer they keep their distance. As a kid, however, I was significantly less chill about anything with eight legs. Andi, a spider-obsessed sixth grader, goes to a party hoping to get a good look at the host’s dad’s spider collection—and she gets way more than she bargained for. Soon, Andi and her friends are trying desperately to evade a veritable spider invasion, and the adults are nowhere to be found. It’s up to Andi to untangle this web. Nobody’s writing better horror for middle grade readers than Russell, and this one’s perfect for arachnophobes and -philes of all ages. Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester (Dec 9, St. Martin’s) DeMeester’s fiction is often concerned with forces that constrain women’s lives, and that’s certainly the case with her third novel. Dark Sisters is told across three timelines: in 1750, Anne, a healer fleeing accusations of witchcraft, starts a small settlement deep in the forest around a powerful, ancient tree. In the 1950s, Anne’s descendant Mary feels trapped in her existence as a housewife until she meets a woman who brings her to life again. And in 2007, Mary’s granddaughter Camilla, only daughter of the strict town preacher, is determined to unravel the mysterious power controlling the town—one that’s tied to the ancient tree at its heart. If you’re a fan of religious horror, feminist horror, cults, and/or witches, this one’s for you.  Midnight Somewhere by Johnny Compton (Dec 9, Blackstone) I consider it a gift when an author I like releases a short story collection—it’s like a tasting menu of the inside of their brain (not to torture a metaphor or anything). Compton’s 2023 debut novel The Spite House haunted me, and so I’m eagerly anticipating Midnight Somewhere, which features twenty one stories that span genres and themes. Of note: “The Merge Monster Incident: One Year Later,” about a roller coaster that comes to life and disappears with all its riders still aboard; “I Caught a Ghost in My Eye,” about, well, a haunted eye; and  “Doctor Bad Eyes is at the Top of the Stairs Again,” about a mother facing down the ghost who keeps scaring her kids. The Writhing, Verdant End by Corey Farrenkopf, Tiffany Morris, & Eric Raglin (Dec 9, Cursed Morsels) All three of these authors are making a name for themselves in the ecohorror space—Morris’ Green Fuse Burning, Farrenkopf’s Haunted Ecologies, and Raglin’s Extinction Hymns all come highly recommended (to you, by me). This volume contains new novellas from Farrenkopf and Raglin and several new short stories from Morris: tales of kudzu cities, unholy mutations, birds, bees, the Flower Man, and a birding vacation that glimmers with the promise of resurrecting an extinct species—at great cost. It never gets easier choosing just a few books to highlight from the many released each month—to see the full list of December’s new horror books and beyond, head over to my website.[end-mark] News and Notes The 2026 new horror list: The 2026 horror list is live! Head over to Read Jump Scares to start building your TBR for next year—we’ll have new books from Paul Tremblay, Ronald Malfi, Bethany C. Morrow, Gemma Amor, Monika Kim, V. Castro, Catriona Ward, Clay McLeod Chapman, Sarah Gailey, Nick Cutter, Daniel Kraus, Eric LaRocca, CJ Leede, Mónica Ojeda, Nat Cassidy, Adam Nevill, Philip Fracassi, Gwendolyn Kiste, Kylie Lee Baker, Cynthia Pelayo, and so many more. As always, I’ll keep updating the list throughout the year (many titles for fall and winter 2026 haven’t quite been announced yet at this point), and if you see that I’ve missed something, please tell me about it here! The year in horror: I picked my three favorites of the year for Talking Scared’s year-end State of the Horror Nation episode, and now I want to know: what were the best horror books you read in 2025? The post Ancient Gods and Arachnids: Horror Highlights for December 2025 appeared first on Reactor.