Five debut novels picked by CrimeReads — a gothic grief story, a haunted Palestinian home, cannibalistic dynasty satire, a queer-friendly monster tale, and an otherworldly desert investigation.
Hallie Shepherd’s Call Off the Dark is a gothic-leaning thriller about grief and isolation with notable twists.
Deena Helm’s Our Cut of Salt mixes family memory and an occupied, sentient house anchored in a Palestinian setting.
Megan Mostyn-Brown’s The Need frames cannibalism and aristocratic dynastic pressure in a darkly satirical family drama.
CrimeReads's September round-up highlights five debut novels that push between thriller, noir, crime, and horror. The picks skew seasonally spooky and share themes of family, memory, and investigation — but each approaches those themes through a distinct uncanny lens.
Call Off the Dark — Hallie Shepherd (William Morrow)
A gothic thriller centered on grief and isolation. The novel is described as confident in voice and bold in its twists. The story generates atmosphere by placing a grieving protagonist in close, uneasy proximity to neighbors and the small domestic ecosystems that can both comfort and threaten.
Our Cut of Salt — Deena Helm (Tor Nightfire)
A haunted-house tale grounded in a Palestinian family's history. The youngest daughter returns to the family's ancestral home in Haifa after an elder's death to uncover secrets. The house itself is described as having been "sickened under the weight of occupation," behaving in physically disruptive ways — devouring new residents, scaring animals — while the family contends with the ghost of the grandmother and the legacy of displacement.
The Need — Megan Mostyn-Brown (Del Rey)
A darkly comic and savage family drama about cannibalistic aristocracy. A widow and her teenage children are pressured by the dead husband's family, an ancient dynasty that requires an heir who shares their taste for human flesh. The blurb frames the book as part horror, part satirical dynastic portrait, interrogating wealth, inheritance, and monstrous traditions.
I Am the Monster Under the Bed — Emily Zinnikas (St. Martin's)
Readers who favor atmospheric suspense, gothic mood, or strange fiction will find something here. If you prefer your thrillers anchored in family drama or cultural context, Deena Helm's and Megan Mostyn-Brown's novels offer those registers. If you lean toward weird, research-heavy mysteries or intimate, oddly humane monster stories, look to Observer and I Am the Monster Under the Bed.
September's crop of debuts is unified by an appetite for the uncanny. Each book uses horror or the grotesque to revisit family ties, inheritance, and the traces left behind by the dead — whether that's a literal ghost, a dynastic appetite, or a vanished parent's notes in a desert observatory.
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