Fresh New Books June 30, 2026 | Kiss Your $ Goodbye!
This is where I spotlight the sparkling new releases that are tempting me so you can succumb to temptation too. The focus will be on dark fiction and romance with the occasional thriller tossed in that catches my eye.
We're going through a major heatwave so hopefully I can catch up on my reading and add a few of these newer ones to the tbr!
New Books This Week!
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
Philip K. Dick meets the Coen Brothers in this genre-bending near-future tech nightmare that is as bitingly funny as it is horrifically believable from the New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie.
Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former semi-professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn’t like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world’s largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can’t refuse. One sham interview later, she’s offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state—one with proprietary AI implanted in his head—from California to the East Coast.
To sum up in Julia’s own words: “You want me to remote control this dead dude across the country.” In a word, yes. But he’s not dead dead.
Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he’s trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn’t remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can’t remember.
Using a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls “Bernie” from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was—and who he must track down. And as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality.
Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a heady, horrific genre-bender from one of the most groundbreaking voices in fiction today.
Learn more at Goodreads
Keep Them Close by David Ellis
From the bestselling author of Look Closer comes a new domestic thriller about betrayal and murder inside one twisted family
Siblings Allison and Luke have been through a lot together. They’ve always stood by each other. They’d do anything for each other.
When Allison’s husband, Finley, is murdered, the investigation threatens to expose the siblings’ darkest secrets. An illicit affair. A decades-old accident. A stunning deception. How do these events explain Finley’s death? How far will Allison and Luke go to keep their secrets buried? And can the siblings even trust one another anymore?
As the investigation winds tighter and past and present collide, the most shocking betrayal might lie a little too close to home…
Learn more at Goodreads.
The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave
A horror-infused, polyphonic work about the violence and cruelty seething in a late-70s Guadalajara neighborhood
At a traveling fair, a young girl visiting with her family will ask a “serpent woman” to tell her future. The serpent woman’s answer is cryptic, but back in their neighborhood, the lives of the girl and her sister will be haunted by a ghost and a boa as their world shimmers between the real and unreal.
The Summer of the Serpent gives us a multi-faceted, multi-textured look at the sisters, their family, and their neighbors caught in the strange intense forces afflicting the neighborhood throughout that summer, much of it seemingly related from 40 years later, in more or less our own present.
Learn more at Goodreads.
Run to Beat the Devil by Drew Huff
A femgore serial killer novel, perfect for fans of MAEVE FLY and SHY GIRL!
At seven years old, H can lure, kill, and gut a human being. Held captive by her mother, a pyromaniac serial killer, she's learned fast. But when her mother locks her in a burning gas station and plays dumb, H knows: if she can't outwit her mother or escape, she'll die.
Fifteen years later, adult H is waiting for her incarcerated mother to finally get the death penalty. She's dragged her long-time boyfriend, Gooch, on a cross-country road trip where she's reliving her past in the bloodiest way possible. As a stalker begins hunting H and Gooch down, and H begins sprouting teeth in the worst possible areas of her body, and the media frenzy drags her into a self-destructive spiral, H wonders:
Can you ever truly escape your past?
Learn more at Goodreads.
Howling on the Bluff by Veronica Samek
Amazon Bestselling Author Veronica Samek invites you to Moonfall Isle, where Halloweentown whimsy meets Dream Harbor heat in a cozy and spicy monster romance.
Ivy didn’t know she had an aunt. She certainly didn’t know she’d inherited a cottage and general store on an island that doesn’t appear on any map.
Recently divorced and desperate for a fresh start, Ivy has nothing left to lose. The inheritance feels like her last lifeline.
Until she arrives.
The island doesn’t have reliable electricity. Cars don’t work. Cell service is useless. The residents stare too long. Something in the woods is watching her.
When a monster attacks, Ivy is saved by the very man she thought was stalking her. Conall is a brooding faehound who can shift into something more wolf and vine than man. He claims he is bound to protect her.
She doesn’t want his protection, and he doesn’t want the responsibility. Ivy resents being trapped under his constant watch. Conall resents being bound to protect a woman determined to make his job difficult.
Then Ivy discovers her aunt's final spell is failing.
The magic protecting Moonfall Isle is unraveling, leaving the island vulnerable to dangerous monsters from beyond its shores. Worse, Ivy is the only person who can fix it.
Now she and Conall must work together to save the island before its protections collapse completely.
Because if they fail, the next monster that finds Ivy won't be one sworn to protect her.
Learn more at Goodreads.
The Siren of Groves Peak by Glenn Rolfe
Groves Peak, Maine is home to a dark secret. The successful lobstering community is ready for summer, but a murder at sea changes everything. People are dying in the small coastal town, and the lobstermen are on edge.
Only one man knows the truth. His closet of skeletons is about to open, and no one is safe. Not even his daughter or her best friend. As a supernatural fury, homegrown dangers, and buried secrets coalesce into a series of real-life nightmares, friendships are tested, and heroes will fall. The Siren of Groves Peak reveals the true monsters in us all.
Learn more at Goodreads.
What Happened to Those Girls by Carlyn Greenwald
Pretty Little Liars meets The Blair Witch Project in this harrowing thriller from the author of Murder Land, brimming with betrayal, unsettling town secrets, and a killer lurking in the woods.
Emma knows her friends all lie to her. And everyone knows Emma is the outcast of their group. She's usually fine with that, until her friends go on a camping trip that she planned...without her. The next morning, she wakes up to the news that all three of them died at the campsite.
When Emma starts receiving unnerving videos of the girls the night they died from an anonymous source, it becomes clear their deaths weren't an accident. And if this becomes a murder case, Emma will be suspect number one. Because while everyone knows she had been excluded from the plans, what they don't know is that she went to the campsite that night after all, and someone has proof.
Emma teams up with Beck, one of the victims' sisters, to return to the woods and figure out what really happened the night her friends died, uncover who is behind the mysterious videos she is receiving, and make sure that nobody can pin their murders on her. But stranded in an eerie town that doesn't welcome outsiders with a murderer on their heels, Emma and Beck just might be next…
Learn more at Goodreads.
Comments
Post a Comment