Horror About Feminine Rage

After her dad cheats on her mom and leaves the family behind for another woman, Ji-won’s mom starts dating a man named George. George’s bravado, wandering eye, and condescension toward Ji-won and her sister soon grate on Ji-won’s nerves. With pressure mounting in her freshman year of college and dreams of eyes haunting her nights, Ji-won’s irritation escalates until she has to do something about it.

Cora Zeng is still reeling from the death of her sister, which she witnessed when a stranger pushed her in front of an oncoming train right in front of Cora. Now, as a crime scene cleaner, she starts to notice a pattern in the scenes she is called to clean up. At the same time, Cora starts to see her sister’s ghost. This gory, haunting novel builds to a brutal end as Cora’s grief, work, and ghosts collide.

Ren Yu is a teenager, spending her days competing in swimming, pining after her best friend, and struggling with the pressures of teenagehood, including body image, leering men, and social dynamics. In the water, though, none of that exists. Which is why Ren Yu wants to be a mermaid—she wants to never come up for air in the human world again, no matter the cost.

Despite a rocky relationship with her own mother and her mother-in-law, Abby Lamb wants to be a mother more than anything. As a caretaker at an elderly home, Abby makes everything she does about fostering motherly skills. When her husband Ralph’s mother dies, though, he falls into a deep depression, and their perfect future is threatened. Especially after he starts to believe his mother’s ghost is haunting them. Abby will do whatever it takes to get her husband out of his despair and break the enduring hold his mother has on him, even in death.

After the death of her husband, Abitha is an outcast in her colonial New England village. She fights to keep possession of her husband’s farm, despite Puritan societal expectations and her brother-in-law dictating she give it up unless she remarries. In the forest, she crosses paths with a powerful entity, one that offers to give her exactly what she wants.

Middle-aged, quiet, and normal, Mary has been noticing changes lately, things like seeing visions and hearing things that she blames on menopause. After losing her job in New York City, she moves back to her hometown to regroup and care for her elderly aunt. But her symptoms get worse, including hallucinating when she looks in the mirror and writing strange phrases. As the hallucinations start to mirror a serial killer case from 50 years ago, Mary’s normal life becomes not quite so normal after all.