As an editor of this website, I have always enjoyed using my platform for my petty and deeply arbitrary antipathies, including my hatred of Lakes And Summer campsand on that note: cabins, not so great either. They can actually be very scary. And sometimes harvestmen fall on your head while you’re on the toilet. Most of them don’t even have air conditioning. And then there are the cabins in the following books, which are inhabited not only by a variety of arachnids, but also by supernatural forces, monstrous beings, traumatic memories, and no working televisions at all. It’s clear that the pandemic has influenced the flood of haunted house stories published in recent years, but less acknowledged is its influence on the types of escape stories I highlight below. This list is not an exhaustive list of cabin-focused crime and horror stories, but rather a look at current and upcoming novels in which everything is already terrible and then the cabin makes everything worse. Moral of the story: If you feel like visiting a remote outpost in the woods that was once the scene of a series of gruesome murders, you’re better off staying indoors and reading a book.
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Matthew Lyons, A mask made of flies
(Gate Nightfire)
In Matthew Lyons’ propulsive new horror thriller, a bank robbery gone wrong forces one of the robbers to take the remnants of her gang, plus a hostage or two, to her old family cabin to recover. Upon arrival, they discover a VHS with terrifying metaphysical implications, as Lyons takes a sharp left turn toward Lovecraftian cosmic horror scenarios.
Lindy Ryan, Cold snap
(Titanium)
Like Gus Moreno’s This thing between us, Ryan uses her cabin as a method to explore the isolation and claustrophobia of intense grief. The family is at the center Cold snap has just lost its beloved patriarch, and Ryan’s recently widowed protagonist takes her son and cat on their long-awaited cabin getaway for Christmas. She’s not quite sure she has a grip on reality anymore – she just lost her husband, after all – but the metaphysical soon becomes physical when the cabin visit goes violently awry.
Neena Much, Listen to your sister
(St. Martin’s Griffin, February 2025)
Neena Viel’s aptly titled debut takes us inside a loving but dysfunctional sibling group in crisis, then ratchets up the tension to the max. Burdened by her role as guardian to her youngest brother, twenty-something Calla Williams resents the middle child for his ability to wiggle out of care. But she’s also so terrified of losing her immediate family that she’s tormented nightly by visions of her siblings dying. When her teenage charge gets in trouble for actions at a protest rally, she takes the three of them on a journey to a rented cabin to clear the air—bringing with her nightmares and the potential to destroy not just the close-knit family but reality itself.
TJ Klune, The bones under my skin
(Tor Books, February 2025)
Klune has written a moving story about a found family. The X-Files-influenced thriller perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay’s The cabin at the end of the world. The bones under my skin follows Nate, a journalist without a plan, who finds a mysterious girl and her handsome bodyguard hiding in his family’s summer cabin. He soon joins them on their dangerous quest to reunite her with her family while their former captors are hot on their heels. As fast-paced as it is heartwarming!
