Leanne Olson

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson

This book is heartbreaking, enraging, and creepy as hell.

Nona is mother of three Black boys in a housing project in Michigan. Her oldest son was murdered at 18, and Nona desperately wants to protect her younger boys from the same fate. But her home feels haunted, and her middle son seems to be turning into someone she doesn’t know.

Thompson uses hauntings and possession to explore generational trauma and the feeling of being trapped by poverty. It’s a gorgeous book, and the audio by Jasmin Walker is wonderful.

Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os

A woman struggling after a breakdown and breakup with her best friend finds a dead body in the woods, along with a diary.

I absolutely loved this one. It’s fresh, heartbreaking, funny, squelchy, and beautiful. I cried, I laughed, I made sure I wasn’t eating while reading…

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno

Hemlock is a strange, meandering novel with a complex and difficult protagonist.

Sam struggles with alcoholism, guilt, and grief while restoring her father’s cabin in the forest where her mother disappeared years ago.

This book is a mood you either relate to or don’t…I saw someone on Goodreads refer to it as a “marmite book” and I love that term. It was easily a 5-star read for me.

Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick

Okay there’s a pattern to my list of favourites here: if there’s a horror novel set in a forest I’m reading it and loving it.

Jasmine, a nurse at a mental health facility, returns home for a funeral to the redwood forests of California where her grandfather made a living tearing down forests. The trees have some thoughts on that.

Humboldt Cut combines an eco horror, nature-fights-back story with generational trauma from a Black female perspective. It’s gory, tragic, weird, triumphant, and very funny in places.

Morsel by Carter Keane

Morsel is one of those little books that just grabbed me with an intense opening and never let me go.

Lou wants to lift her family out of poverty and accepts a job in rural Ohio with her beloved dog along for the ride, but finds out immediately that something is very wrong.

I loved the mix of creepy folk horror and themes of poverty and what bullshit the trickle down theory is. This is an angry book and I loved it.

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward

I just love when a Catriona Ward novel is confusing and I’m sitting there reading it all “hmmm I know her tricks by now, this is all going to come together somehow…” but she still surprises me.

Nowhere Burning is kind of a Peter Pan retelling (which did not sound appealing to me at all but it really, really works), as it starts with siblings escaping an abusive uncle to live among other children in the wild. Then it gets weirder.

This one’s been divisive but I was so fond of Jude, the main child protagonist, and I was completely mesmerized.

On Sundays She Picks Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

This one is so confident and beautifully written that I was shocked to learn it was a debut novel.

Judith flees her abusive mother in a shocking act of violence, and runs without a plan, finding a mysterious house in the forests of Georgia.

On Sundays is a strange, dark fairy tale about revenge, forgiveness, and love. I especially appreciated the look at family abuse in adult relationships, and Judith’s journey felt so visceral and real.

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

At a 1920s British boarding school, Emily is convinced her mean girl friend Violet was murdered…the only way to know for sure is to try a séance and make contact with Violet beyond the grave.

Sometimes I’m sad I didn’t get to go to boarding school. Séances, hauntings, zombies, messy sapphic love…it just sounds so fun.

Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer

A woman who is trying to become a trad wife influencer finds an old well behind her homestead, and makes a wish for a baby.

I loved reading this right after Yesteryear (not quite horror, but also one of my 2026 favourites) and comparing two messed up trad wives. I’m looking forward to Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife later this year too.

Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong

I’m glad I went into this knowing very little, so I’ll just say the basic premise is two strangers get into a car accident in a storm, and take refuge from the creepy woods in a mysterious dive bar.

Every character in this book won my heart (or my hatred) and the story is wonderfully weird.

Dive Bar comes out October 6th and you should preorder it now. Seriously.

Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies by Lindsay Wong

I gushed about this in my last post. It’s weird and creepy and hilarious.

Wong takes the story of a desperate young Chinese-Canadian woman selling her life away as a corpse bride, and turns into a wickedly smart commentary about the expectations put on children of immigrants.

There’s also so much cool folklore and some great snark about creative writing classes.

Root Rot by Saskia Nislow

This is a weird little novella, written in second person plural (whaaaat? but it works, I swear), and it scared the pants off me.

A group of kids, all cousins, of varying ages are at the family’s lake house. They start to suspect something’s wrong — and the adults aren’t going to help them. Creepy as heck.

Getaway by Zoje Stage

I will never get tired of this book. It’s been a huge influence on my own writing, and it feels so unique.

The story is a fairly typical survival thriller: three old friends go on a camping trip in the Grand Canyon to heal from old wounds, but are they being followed?

Getaway is so much more than that…it’s both tense and fast-paced while being wonderfully introspective and character-driven, pausing to catch its breath at the right moments. There are lines in here I think about regularly. Just gorgeous. Read it.