A Human Generated Summer Reading List for 2025

A request from the author: On Friday, May 16th, the city I live in, Saint Louis, MO, was hit by an EF3 tornado. I am very fortunate to not be personally impacted but many in this city are in dire need of help, especially in historically Black neighborhoods. Nearly all of the response, from cleanup efforts to resources and aid has come from community organizations like Action Saint Louis. Please consider donating at https://www.actionstl.org/donate to help residents of Saint Louis during this trying disaster.

FUCK AI

If you’re in any bookish social media community, or any community critical of generative artificial intelligence, by now you’ve probably heard about the Chicago Sun-Times releasing its AI generated Summer Reading List full of hallucinated titles that don’t exist. 

Listacles aren’t a thing I ever intended to write on this website; but given that there’s a market for them and the writers publishing them are cheating on their homework with artificial intelligence to turn in pure bullshit, I decided now was a fine time to give listacles a chance.

Here is the Nocturne Summer Reading List of books I'm excited to read.  It’s completely written with human intelligence and as a result is subject to all its foibles.

• THE ORGANIZATION IS HERE TO SUPPORT YOU by Charlene Elsby. 

Out March 15th from Weirdpunk

Is March summer?  Do I care?  This is my list and you're going to need some warmup reads as we approach May. I'm hoping to get my hands on this one soon as Charlene Elsby’s novella Violent Faculties from Clash was one of the sickest things I’ve ever read. As I read the prior novella, I kept checking over my shoulder, afraid someone on the airplane I read it on would catch a glimpse of a page and report me to the pilot. Elsby's latest effort seems like it may speak to those of us who feel our lives are governed by bureaucratic bullshit corporate doublespeak. Reading dystopian corporate horror sounds like a decent remedy for those first spring days where the weather is too damned nice to be inside but your need for a wage has you chained to your desk 

• SHAKY PICTURES OF VANISHED FACES by D. Matthew Urban. 

  Out April 15th from Cursed Morsels Press

Editor and press owner Eric Raglan has a knack for finding fucked up stories that say something.  A Cursed Morsels story collection is a beauty to behold.  See Antifa Splatterpunk, and The Nightmare Box and Other Stories for just a few dynamite collections from the press. I'll be honest, the cover for Shaky Pictures has been serving as my sleep paralysis demon ever since it first slipped into my social media algorithm and that's part of the reason I've selected it. While I haven’t read D. Matthew Urban, he boasts an incredible list of publication credentials.  And like I said, Cursed Morsels doesn’t miss.  Promising to “probe the crannies and dead ends where humanity confronts the implacably alien, where even the most familiar faces begin to change, waver, and fade," Shaky Pictures is going to be a collection you won't want to miss.

• PUPPET'S BANQUET by Valkyrie Loughcrewe

  Out May 14th from Tenebrous Press

  

  
  

Tenebrous Press is becoming a go to publisher for fresh, weird fiction.  Their Split Scream novellete series, and Skull & Laurell magazine, as well as impressive wave of book releases makes one wonder if Press editor Alex Woodroe ever sleeps.  Puppet’s Banquet is a body horror novel billed by the publisher as “a hallucinatory treatise on medical abuse; the systemic disease of colonialism and patriarchy; and the limits of human perception.”  The plot summary lets us known we’re in for split consciousness, grotesque body fusion, and a bizarre pregnancy.

• ZERO SAINTS by Gabino Iglesias

  Out May 27th from Mulholland Books

Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker award winning author Gabino Iglesias’s earlier novel Zero Saints is coming back into print with a new edition from Mulholland Books.  If you, like me, started reading Iglesias around the time The Devil Takes You Home dropped, then this opportunity to pick up his first novel is something to be excited for.  From the official plot summary we can expect drug dealers and gangsters that feed body parts to an unnamed “something.”  Iglesias’s natural blend of crime and horror makes for a grim read full of excitement and confrontational ruminations on poverty, racism, and social justice.  This book is certain to help you wash away that post-Memorial Day ick.

• FLEISCHEREI by Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin

  Out May 31st from FILTHY LOOT

Filthy Loot is bold, new, and sick.  Their squat volumes may be an usually small trim size but they command attention in any bookstore display.  I’ve got a review on the way for Strange Spells by Edwin Callihan, which if it’s any indication of the kind of stories Filthy Loot publishes, they’re out there.   Fleischerei is billed as erotic body horror and has grabbed social media praise from the likes of Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin. Would it really be summer without feeling horny but gross?  This is sitting high on my to be read shelf.

• GIRL IN THE CREEK by Wendy N. Wagner

  Out July 15th from Macmillan

Wendy N. Wagner knows a thing or two about great horror serving as the Editor in Chief of Nightmare Magazine, one of the finest horror short story markets out there in my opinion.  The arc of her new novel Girl in the Creek is open on my eReader as we speak.  Exploring themes of ecology, nature, and stewardship; the novel follows Erin, a travel writer using her day job’s resources to investigate missing persons cases, motivated by the disappearance of her brother.  Her travel writing brings her to a small Oregon town where something only referred to in the woods is changing the wildlife, and while investigating missing persons on the side, Erin finds one of them.  I’ve only started the book but right out of the gate I can tell you the writer has imbued the Clackamas National Forest with layers of life and a rich history that’s going to make for an engaging read.  I’d say this is a great book to bring along to a barbecue for my fellow vegans grilling up portobello mushrooms.

• ECHOES AND EMBERS: SPECULATIVE STORIES by Pedro Íñiguez

  Out July 25th from Stars and Sabers Publishing

  

Pedro Íñiguez is in the process of firmly establishing himself a force to be reckoned with in contemporary speculative fiction. Last year's poetry collection Mexicans on the Moon grabbed a Bram Stoker Award nomination, and if you're following this website you know I loved his horror collection Fever Dreams of a Parasite. Íñiguez keeps busy, he's also got a childrens book, The Fib due this fall. While we typically stick to horror at Nocturne, it's not a rule and Echoes and Embers sounds like it's precisely the kind of great speculative fiction I love. Praised on Goodreads as a brilliant collection of Mexican futufuturistic, the volume promises fantasy and science fiction as well as themes of Latinx themes.

• ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus

  Out July 25th from Simon & Schuster

Daniel Kraus barely needs introduction from his collaboration with legendary zombie filmmaker George A. Romero, to his wildly entertaining novel Whalefall, he’s a writer with a phenomenal career.   His latest, ANGEL DOWN is a WW1 novel about a group of soldiers encountering a wounded angel in No Man’s Land. 

• WE LIKE IT CHERRY by Jacy Morris

  Out August 5th from Tenebrous Press

This made it to my want to read from the description alone.  I can’t resist good Arctic horror, and as you’re already aware if you made it this far down the list, in Tenebrous we trust.  A supernatural slasher about a journalist encountering a previously unknown tribe in the arctic that promises a battle with mythological evil?  Sounds like an excellent way to stay cool. 

• THIS IS MY BODY by Lindsay King-Miller

  Out August 5th from Quirk Books

I need this book.  Lindsay King-Miller is the author of the acclaimed The Z Word.  Her new novel is about a queer, single mother returning to the church she fled from to get her child an exorcism. The publisher describes it as, ”…a piercing journey into religious trauma and childhood shame, building towards a heart-pounding twisty climax that will spin your head all the way around.”

• A GAME IN YELLOW by Hailey Piper

  Out August 12th from Simon & Schuster

Hailey Piper keeps busy. She keeps books coming at an almost dizzying pace. Having enjoyed the cosmic horror of The Worm and His Kings, I was delighted to read the synopsis for this new book involves a play that drives people mad.  The publisher compares this next one to Eric LaRocca, and promises horror, erotica, and psychological thriller.  I’m all in.

• ABDUCTED by Patrick Barb

  Out August 26th from Dark Matter Ink

As a fan of Barb’s short stories like the phenomenal The Pig-men’s Mud Motel from Antifa Splatterpunk, and as a child of the 90s whose greatest fear was being abducted by aliens after watching too many X-Files episodes and Fire in the Sky, this novel has me absolutely brimming with excitement. Abducted is described as the X-files meets Gone Girl, I am without a doubt going to check this out.  Alien horror is well overdue for a comeback. 

• TEENAGE GIRLS CAN BE DEMONS by Hailey Piper

  Out September 16th from Titan

Yes, Hailey Piper made it on the list twice, this time with a short story collection.  I’ve read at least one of these stories before in the anthology Other Terrors.  The Turning is a story about an epidemic of teenagers transforming into Pterodactyls.  It’s without a doubt one of the best works of strange fiction I’ve ever read and it just might rewire your brain.  I’m basing this recommendation off that one story alone because I’m certain it will be worth the price of admission and might get far more than you bargained for.

• FIEND by Alma Katsu

  Out September 16th from Penguin Random House

Alma Katsu is the writer who brought me back to reading.  After a grueling undergrad program in chemistry, I hadn’t read a new book for fun in years.  I picked Katsu's The Hunger up at random from my local book store and swallowed it in a day.  Typically Katsu, who it should be noted writes successfully in many genres, when working in horror delves into historical fiction.  Hunger is about The Donner Party, The Deep is about the Titanic, and The Fervor is about America’s Japanese internment camps in WW2. Fiend is a break from tradition, and boasts the log line, “What if the Sackler family had a demon at their beck and call.” 

 Artificial intelligence is a fascinating tool, but it has limitations, and in this author's opinion, it has absolutely no place in communications or art. Most current generative AI systems are largely built upon data taken without consent from creators and are therefore unethical to use.

If communications integrity continues to fray and mainstream publications descend into meaningless AI generated madness, I can promise you that Nocturne Books & Media will always provide human written and curated content for discerning readers. Listacles aren't my thing, but if this gets a good response, you may see more of them.