It’s still October and I’m still in a horrific, creepy mood with these book lists!! Last night during The Pink Riot Comic Show’s October Riot Review, we dove deep into the comic Where Black Stars Rise by Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger. Where Black Stars Rise is a cosmic horror published by Tor Nightfire in 2022 that follows two characters: a queer Lebanese immigrant therapist named Amal Robardin who is completely out of her depth, and her Middle Eastern client, Yasmin, who is schizophrenic and struggling with nightmares and an oppressive entity in her home. The first half of the book focuses on their awkward sessions and the second half takes a trip to Carcosa, the realm of the King of Yellow.
I fell in love with this cosmic horror that truly dives into the nothingness and despair that one can feel while also still trying to navigate reality and highlighting Shakespeare’s play within a play device (metadramas). My cohost Bri and I had very different reactions to the horror and climax of the comic. I saw Yasmin’s decision as a peaceful one, something that mirrors my own feelings and I found horror in the struggles with reality whereas Bri saw the horror in Yasmin’s decision and had more hope throughout the story.
That conversation helped solidify a burgeoning love for the genre, BUT SPECIFICALLY cosmic horror written by Black, Indigenous, and other Creators of Color. I love seeing our communities process and reclaim the influence of this genre with a historically racist past (thanks to Lovecraft and many others) and create something with similar emotion but no -isms.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of BIPOC cosmic horror titles you should keep an eye on!
Where Black Stars Rise by Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger (2022)
Comic Book Summary: Dr. Amal Robardin, a Lebanese immigrant and a therapist in training, finds herself out of her depth when her first client, Yasmin, a schizophrenic, is visited by a nightly malevolent presence that seems all too real.
Yasmin becomes obsessed with Robert Chambers’ classic horror story collection The King in Yellow. Messages she finds in the book lead Yasmin to disappear, seeking answers she can’t find in therapy.
Amal attempts to retrace her patient’s last steps—and accidentally slips through dimensions, ending up in Carcosa, realm of the King in Yellow. Determined to find her way out, Amal enlists the help of a mysterious guide.
Can Amal save Yasmin? Or are they both trapped forever?
Ring Shout by P.Djélí Clark
Novella Summary: IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan’s demons straight to Hell. But something awful’s brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
Nana by Brandon Massey (2018)
Novel Summary: Monica Stephens never knew her birth mother.
Raised by a strict but loving adoptive parent, she blossomed into a woman with a thriving career as a pediatrician and a family of her own. But sometimes, she wondered about her origins.Especially her biological mother.
Until Grace arrives.
Confessing to be the birth mother Monica had long wanted to meet, Grace quickly becomes an indispensable member of the Stephens household. Cooking their meals. Looking after the children. Comforting Monica when the family dog is inexplicably killed. Tending to Monica as she falls ill to a mysterious sickness that, every day, makes Monica look and feel older.
Meanwhile, Grace is looking better. More vibrant. More youthful. More seductive .
Monica’s husband, Troy, knows something is up.
He launches an investigation into the woman who demands to be called “Nana,” and has taken over his home. But the truth is beyond their wildest imaginings. It seems Grace has done this before.
Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (2018)
Comic Book Summary: The richly imagined world of MONSTRESS is an alternate matriarchal 1900s Asia, with an art deco-infused steampunk aesthetic that’s brimming with arcane dangers. Within it, a teenage girl struggles to overcome the trauma of war, a task that’s made all the more difficult by her mysterious psychic link to an eldritch monster of tremendous power—a connection that will transform them both, and place them in the crosshairs of both human and otherworldly powers.
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (2021)
Novel Summary: In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn’t remember who he is, where he’s from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it’s as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they’re not the only ones. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She’s got six.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle (2016)
Novella Summary: People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn’t there.
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father’s head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.
A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?
Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw (2016)
Novella Summary: John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.
He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.
As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.
Roots of Madness by Stephanie Williams (2026)
Comic Book Summary: At the turn of the 20th century, a young Black woman named Etta Knight picks up the tradition of her late mother for creating special medicines using natural ingredients and secrets passed down from generation to generation. Her mother has passed on a book of recipes and formulas, but it’s also full of strange symbols and dark musings that she doesn’t quite understand. Within her community, one of the problems she hopes to fix is counteracting the poisonous and abrasive solutions women of color are sold for straightening her hair.
So, when the Meridian Fellowship reaches out and offers her a spot at their institute in Savannah, GA, to use their facilities to do her research, Etta jumps at the chance. She packs up her mother’s book and heads to the school, but what she finds there is a secret society and a campus surrounded by natural wonders that may point the way to understanding the more mysterious parts of her mother’s work…if dark forces don’t claim her first.
Inspired by the life of Madame CJ Walker, this alternate history combines tradition with the supernatural for something truly modern and unique.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (2023) TBR
Novel Summary: A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”
Alicia is in the Basement by Santiago Eximeno (2026) TBR
Translated Novel Summary: For the first time in English, the translation of Santiago Eximeno’s Spanish original Alicia en el Só tano follows a father’s descent into darkness in pursuit of a lost child.
One summer afternoon, Santi and Maria’s daughter disappears without a trace from a public park.
A fruitless investigation passes, the agony only serving to tear Santi’ s life and family further apart.
Months go by, and Santi finally stumbles upon a clue: it is hardly a name, barely a whisper, but it is enough to reveal a haunting legacy and unleash an entirely new kind of horror upon the despairing young father: ” He Who Does Not Speak With Children.
The Sunken, The Adored by Donyae Coles (2026) TBR
Novel Summary: Venice, Italy, 1800’s. The only survivor on a ship, Mercy disembarks in Italy, carrying two precious possessions: the first-ever camera that makes daguerreotype plates and a letter regarding an appointment meant for the dead slave holder.
The letter takes her to Umberto, an Anatomist. In his basement workspace, she learns he hired the man who formally owned her to capture images of dissected corpses. But that man is dead. With no other recourse for her or Umberto, Mercy assumes the position. In return for the sample plate she took, Umberto takes her to the home of the Contessa, a British woman who married into her title. Charmed by Mercy, she invites the young woman to stay for the season to take pictures.
Formerly enslaved, Mercy finds this new life of freedom heady, as she takes on the mantle of a photographer and guest in a decadent house of pleasure under the hospitality of an aristocrat. Under the Contessa’s roof, she meets a diverse cast of friendly and strange individuals with whom she forms new bonds and friendships.
But all is not well in her new life. Something dark and hungry stalks the canals that snake through the city, biting at her heels. The same death that rode the waves with her now surrounds her in this strange place. What is this malevolence that haunts her? As she tries to understand this macabre force, she must grapple with a greater fear: that the horror that endangers her friends is herself.
She Walks in the Shadows edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles (2015) TBR
ASTERISK: Not every short story is by a BIPOC creator!
Anthology Summary: Women from around the world delve into Lovecraftian depths, penning and illustrating a variety of Weird horrors.
The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America.
And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath?
Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers.
Observe them in all their glory.
Iä!
Iä!
Uzumaki by Junji Ito (2013) TBR
Manga Summary: Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world. The bizarre masterpiece horror manga is now available all in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!
** There are several cosmic horror stories out there written by White authors with Black and Brown main characters. I advise not reading those. It feels inherently racist and offensive and it’s something I’m going to explore later on the blog.
If you enjoyed this list, please share! And if you know of any others, put them in the comments!!
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