Five fantastic LGBTQIA+ horror recommendations. That’s really all you need to know before you let these inventive, thought-provoking narratives consume you.

They by Kay Dick

Lost for over forty years, They (1977) is a rediscovered dystopian masterpiece.

They are coming closer. They begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Then, the National Gallery is purged; motorway checkpoints demarcate Areas, violent mobs stalk the countryside, destroying cultural artefacts - and those who resist. The surviving writers, artists and thinkers gather together, welcoming ‘dissidents’ like the unmarried and the childless. These polyamorous communities preserve their crafts, create, love, and remember. But as ‘subversives’ are captured in military sweeps, cured of identity, desensitised in retreats, they make it easier to forget …

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they’ll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren’t safe. After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics-all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.

To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism.

A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store’s dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted house guest.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers.