Celebrating Latinx Authors
15 books by Latinx authors that should be on your radar.
This month’s Night Worms package is celebrating Latinx authors. We received two beautiful books by Latinx authors and this leads me to want more.
I decided to go around and ask readers who their favorite Latinx authors were. When I asked around most readers drew a blank or only had a few names to give. I was also guilty of only knowing a few Latinx authors myself so I set out to diversify my shelves and add more own voices stories to my reading list. I called on my buddy Matt, @teamredom, to help me put together a sweet list for y’all to add more Latinx authors to our reading list.
Matt and I are both cover buyers when it comes to buying books. GUILTY AS CHARGED. We hope some of these covers will catch your eye. With all of these books being by Latinx horror authors that might happen… literally. Mwahahaha!
Itzá by Rios de la Luz
In her debut novella, Rios de la Luz examines the lives of a small family of water witches living near the US-Mexico border. Exploring issues of race and trauma along with beauty and magic, Itzá is a powerful reclamation of body and identity.
Maria the Wanted and The Legacy of the Keepers by V. CastroMaria is a wanted woman. She's wanted by and Aztec trafficker, a cartel boss, the people she fights for, and now the Devil she can't resist. Her journey begins as a would-be immigrant turned vampire in Juarez, Mexico until the injustices of the world turn her into something else. She's not just out for blood, she wants answers. Maria spends twenty-two years in motel cleaning purgatory trying to keep her faith and sanity intact. When she feels all hope is lost she meets an ex-boxer that offers her a new job and teaches her to fight. During this time, she becomes an unlikely badass enforcer of justice for the community that has embraced her. Is she a saint or an old God from a forgotten past?
Not only does she evolve into the woman she always hoped to be, but she finds her creator - Adam- he is nothing like she imagined. He invites Maria to travel with him to England to join The Keepers, a vampire organization led by the ancient Mordecai and Dr. Elizabeth Appleton.
Learning that the true vampire way isn't destruction but the safety of humanity, Maria joins The Keepers as they uncover a plot set into motion by Lucifer himself. The Keepers must end his corruption through political manipulation or watch as the world hurtles towards self-destruction.
Coyote Songs by Gabino IglesiasI n this mosaic horror/crime novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.
Camp Slaughter by Sergio Gomez
It's a local legend. No one is sure if this Camp Slaughter place is real or not. But a group of college kids renting out a cabin deep in the woods of Pennsylvania will soon realize the truth. They'll realize the danger, too. Or rather, the cannibal out in the woods will bring the danger to them...
By Carmen Maria Machado
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
Five Midnights by Ann Dávila Cardinal
Five friends cursed. Five deadly fates. Five nights of retribución.
If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other's company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends. And if they want to catch the killer, they'll have to step into the shadows to see what's lurking there--murderer, or monster?
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She's not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story, and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
A haunted Argentinian mansion.
A family curse.
A twist you'll never see coming.
Welcome to Vaccaro School.
Simmering in Patagonian myth, Sara Faring's The Tenth Girl is a gothic psychological thriller with a haunting twist.
At the very southern tip of South America looms an isolated finishing school. Legend has it that the land will curse those who settle there. But for Mavi--a bold Buenos Aires native fleeing the military regime that took her mother--it offers an escape to a new life as a young teacher to Argentina's elite girls.
Mavi tries to embrace the strangeness of the imposing house--despite warnings not to roam at night, threats from an enigmatic young man, and rumors of mysterious Others. But one of Mavi's ten students is missing, and when students and teachers alike begin to behave as if possessed, the forces haunting this unholy cliff will no longer be ignored... and one of these spirits holds a secret that could unravel Mavi's existence.
13th Street: Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats
by David Bowles
A new silly and spooky highly illustrated series that's perfect for fans of Eerie Elementary and Notebooks of Doom, featuring art on every page and fun activities at the end of each book!
Cousins Malia, Ivan, and Dante are visiting their aunt Lucy for the summer. But on their way to Gulf City's water park, they get lost on 13th Street. Only it's not a street at all. It's a strange world filled with dangerous beasts! Will the cousins find their way back to Aunt Lucy's?
Each story in this hilarious and scary new series from award-winning author David Bowles is designed to set independent readers up for success--with short, fast-paced chapters, art on every page, and progress bars at the end of each chapter!
Shutter by Courtney Alameda
Lock, stock, and lens, she's in for one hell of a week.
Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat-a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.
When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soul chain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.
Hipster Death Rattle by Richie Narvaez
Murder is trending. Hipsters are getting slashed to pieces in the hippest neighborhood in New York: Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While Detectives Petrosino and Hadid hound local gangbangers, slacker reporter Tony Moran and his ex Magaly Fernandez get caught up in a missing person's case--one that might just get them hacked to death.
Filled with a cast of colorful characters and told with sardonic wit, this fast-moving, intricately plotted novel plays out against a backdrop of rapid gentrification, skyrocketing rents, and class tension. New Yorkers and anyone fascinated with the city will love the story's details, written like only a true native could. Entertaining to the last, this rollicking debut is sure to make Richie Narvaez a rising star on the mystery scene.
Island of Bones by Gaby Triana
A haunted Key West resort. Ghosts of a secretive family past. A deadly hurricane.
When Ellie Whitaker leaves her dead-end job behind to spread her grandmother's ashes in a tropical paradise, the last thing she expected was to face more ghosts. But darkness lurks inside her nana's ancestral home. Ellie's presence stirs up its energies. And as a hurricane creeps closer to the island, she must hurry to discover long-buried truths.
About her treasure-hunting grandfather's death in 1951. About the curse her grandmother left behind. About the innkeeper next door with an evil secret. And the spectral visions she keeps having. Some there to help her. Some to make sure Ellie becomes a ghostly resident of haunted Key West forever.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the young sorceress Sabrina Spellman finds herself at a crossroads, having to choose between an unearthly destiny and her mortal boyfriend, Harvey. But a foe from her family's past has arrived in Greendale, Madame Satan, and she has her own deadly agenda. Archie Comics' latest horror sensation starts here! For TEEN+ readers. (graphic novel)
The House on Moon Creek Avenue
by E. Reyes
Cindy Flores, a twenty-one-year-old single mother, retail worker, and college student, inherits her grandmother's home on Moon Creek Avenue after she passes away. Cindy's father offers to pay the utilities until she graduates from college; doing whatever he can do so that she doesn't go back to her abusive boyfriend.
At first, the home is comfortable, nostalgic of Cindy's childhood at nana's, and her daughter enjoys the home, too. But soon, ghosts randomly appear day and night, doors open and close, a streak of bad luck begins, Cindy and her daughter have unsettling nightmares, and Cindy's mental state is pushed to the edge.
When Cindy's video recording of paranormal activity goes viral on social media, she gets the attention of famous ghost hunters. Without anywhere else to turn, Cindy confides in their help to find out why she's being haunted. A terrifying investigation leads to revelation and surprise.
Will she find the root of the evil being caused at her home on Moon Creek Avenue?
Hell Chose Me by Angel Luis Colón
Bryan Walsh is a killer for hire. He is haunted by those who have fallen by his hand. He will stop at nothing to avenge his brother's death.
When a lifetime of bad karma finally lands on Bryan's doorstep and leaves his brother dead, he must survive long enough to find the killers and get his revenge, but as the path only grows bloodier, Bryan may not be able to handle the steps he'll need to take against his enemies.
As he becomes more unstable and his past crashes into his present, Bryan must decide if vengeance is worth becoming the monster he always denied or if he could find another path; one that could lead to something like redemption.
Editor's Add:
Shapeshifter by J. F. Gonzalez
Mark Wiseman has been living with the curse for years. He thought he had it under control. He thought he had kept it secret from everybody. Until Bernard Roberts, a powerful, influential man, came into his life. Bernard knows about the curse that runs through Mark's veins. He knows how Mark's parents were killed eight years ago. And if Mark wants Bernard to keep these things secret he must do what Bernard tells him. He must use his curse to kill. Bernard Roberts wants to exploit Mark for his own purposes. And Mark Wiseman begins to lose control of the curse, threatening his own life, and the life of the woman he loves.
Poems of My Night by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo constructs a narrative in her poetry in response to the work of Jorge Luis Borges that examines the themes and subsequent consequences of insomnia, death, and blindness. There’s a visionary quality to her work that dances along the line between the present world that we inhabit and the other world that lingers beyond the veil. Her poetry folds back this blanket of darkness, and shows readers the quiet violence and beauty that hides beneath waiting to be exposed, experienced, and encompassed.
Pelayo showcases this scream of silence through an urban and metaphysical night as she reflects on the spiritual, the occult, and the everyday happenings that become extraordinary in their own rights. Her poems are sermons, prayers to the voices that surround us in the dark, and comforts to those who watch over us as we sleep. Her style is honest, raw, and her voice will leave readers asking questions about what waits for them in the beyond, and whether or not their sins and frustrations are trapping them in the here and now. She shows us that all too often, there is nothing to be scared of when the sun goes down, but that sometimes, we have every reason to be afraid, especially as we enter her world of blackness and decay, of smudged fingerprints and burnt pictures. These poems are cautionary tales for those who choose not to cover their eyes, warnings for those who refuse to find the light. And when our dreams come to roost, when our sleep eases us in, Pelayo shows us what nightmares are made of, and why there are some stories we can never escape.
Matt is a middle school math teacher. He's originally from Kentucky but currently lives in Arkansas with his beautiful wife and 2-year-old son. In addition to reading dark fiction, he also enjoys board games and Disney World.