Kylie Lee Baker

New York Times Most Anticipated Book for 2026 USA TODAY Most Anticipated Books of 2026 Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2026 Book Riot "Our Most Anticipated Books of 2026" In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds. October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge—his father’s new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls. October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father’s face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window. One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie. Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.

A gothic dual-timeline novel of ghosts, hauntings and redemption

Japanese Gothic

Josephine Cammarano

Most nights, she dreamed of a black sea that drowned her even though she had no body, lo lungs, no mouth. It roared more loudly that any beast, its salt scraping across her soul, its darkness stealing all her light. But on some nights, the sea parted and a pale woman sat on the white sand. Her lips moved as if forming words, but Sen could never hear them over the ocean's roar. A great sadness weighed down her features, but when Sen drew closer, the ocean stole her away.

Lee did not crave the moment of impact, only the fall. How would it feel to be weightless? Would the darkness fold around him and catch him in a pillow of nothingness? How wet was the mouth of darkness before it devoured you?

Maybe the bridge between life and death isn't a bridge at all. Maybe it's more like an ocean. You're under the water, reaching for the surface, and I am on the shore, dipping my hand into the sea.

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