18 Horror Books for AAPINH Heritage Month

The Eyes Are the Best Part

Monika Kim

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught, starts dating George, who has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

In her dreams, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, and no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

The Library at Hellebore

Cassandra Khaw

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told after she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But the Institute is more than just a haven for monsters. On graduation day, the faculty embark on a ravenous rampage, feasting on their students. Alessa and her surviving classmates must do something they were never taught: work together. If they don't, this school will eat them alive...

What Hunger

Catherine Dang

It's the summer before high school, and Ronny finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first to attend college.

But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.

Aisle Nine

Ian X. Cho

Ever since the world filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons started popping out on the reg, Jasper’s life has gotten worse and worse.

Jasper spends his days working as a checkout clerk at the Here For You discount mart, where a hell portal in aisle nine means danger every shift. But at least here he can be near the girl he’s crushing on—Kyle Kuan, a member of the monster-fighting Vanguard—who seems to hate Jasper for reasons he can't remember or understand. But when Jasper and Kyle learn they both share a frightening vision of the impending apocalypse, they’re forced to team up and uncover the uncomfortable truth about the hell portals and the demons that haunt the world.

Haunted Hawaiian Nights

Robert Lopaka Kapanui

All of these tales are part of Hawai‘i’s folklore, and all of them were told to the author over many years by everyday people. They are unembellished, and all the more powerful because of that. They teach us that there is much in life that cannot be explained, and that in a modern world that prizes the rational there are others above and below its surface. A born storyteller, Kapanui gives the reader a rich voyage through other times and places, keeping in sight all the while the human comedy and its corresponding tragedy, along with the unseen humor and terror that surround every one of us.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Kylie Lee Baker

Cora is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train.

The bloody messes don't really bother Cora--she's more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner. She pushes away all feelings and ignores the advice of her aunt, but she can't ignore the dread in her stomach as she keeps finding bat carcasses at crime scenes, or the fact that all her recent cleanups have been the bodies of East Asian women. As Cora will soon learn, you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.

She is a Haunting

Trang Thanh Tran

When Jade arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don't belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens, and at night Jade can't ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don't eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. As she roots out the house's rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

The Sacrifice

Rin Chupeco

Pristine beaches, lush greenery, and perfect weather, the island of Kisapmata would be the vacation destination...if not for the curse. The Filipino locals speak of it in hushed voices and refuse to step foot on the island. They know the lives it has claimed. They won't be next.

A Hollywood film crew won't be dissuaded. Legend claims a Dreamer god sleeps, waiting to grant unimaginable powers in exchange for eight sacrifices. The producers are determined to document the evidence. And they convince Alon, a local teen, to be their guide.

Alon knows they are falling victim to the island's curse. If Alon can't convince them to leave, there is no telling who will survive. Or how much the Dreamer god will destroy...

Severance

Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But C

Reprieve

James Han Mattson

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize—a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants. As each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe.

The Ghost Bride

Yangsze Choo

Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favorable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a “ghost bride” for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at what price?

Night after night, Li Lan is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, where she must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family.

Build Your House Around my Body

Violet Kupersmith

1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed. 

2011: A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. 

The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last page.

When Devils Sing

Xan Kaur

When Dawson Sumter goes missing, all he leaves behind is a smattering of blood in room 4 of the debt-ridden motel owned by Neera Singh's family.

For Neera, Dawson is another reminder that in this corner of the South, the rich only get richer, and the poor—well, nothing good comes their way.

Neera sets out to investigate Dawson’s whereabouts—if he even still lives—along with three other teens. As they find themselves entangled in a messy web of secrets and lies, they discover the riches of the adjacent Lake Clearwater community may have a terrifying source of power dating back to the town’s founding and an ancient urban legend about three devils, each more sinister than the next.

Infidel

Pornsak Pichetshote

This graphic novel series is the first by Thai American editor Pornsak Pichetshote. Infidel is your typical haunted house story that follows a Muslim woman and her diverse array of neighbors who move into a building that starts exhibiting peculiar behavior. Soon they learn that the evil spirits in the house feed off of xenophobic thoughts.

Vampire Junction

S.P. Somtow

Vampire Junction tells the story of Timmy Valentine, a seemingly 11-year-old pop star who has become a heartthrob and idol for kids worldwide. However, his secret is that he is actually over 2,000 years old and a bloodthirsty vampire.

Mata Oti

Lani Young

The virus has breached the island's borders. Paradise has fallen. The apocalypse is here. From reclusive librarian to warrior guardian...

Iva must safeguard her two god-daughters as Samoa battles a mutant variant of the deadly virus that's raging across the world. It transforms people into savage creatures beyond all hope. She's afraid, but determined to get the children through hordes of the infected to an emergency evacuation plane. It's a race against time though as the variant rampages through her own veins. Can she fight off the Change for long enough so they all survive?

A thrilling apocalyptic novel from the author of the bestselling Telesā Series.

Island Witch

Amanda Jayatissa

Being the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British Colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father’s craft have turned on the family. Yet, they all still seem to call on him whenever supernatural disturbances arise.

Now someone—or something—is viciously seizing upon men in the jungle. But instead of enlisting Amara’s father’s help, the villages have accused him of carrying out the attacks himself.

As she tries to clear her father’s name, Amara finds herself haunted by dreams that eerily predict the dark forces on her island.

Natural Beauty

Ling Ling Huang

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano she learned from her parents who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures, and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.