"Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel" by Ahmed Saadawi and translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright. This award winning novel shows how powerful horror can be. Hadi sews the pieces of corpses together to create a whole cadaver. When it goes missing, a series of murders grips the city. At first only criminals are the victims but in time innocent bystanders are killed by the monster that needs more flesh.

"The Dark Circus" by Ana Ballabriga and David Zaplana and translated from the Spanish by Michael Meigs. L grew up in a run down circus. Exploited by day and ritually abused by night, she knows only the circus' perverted morality, debauchery and the art of thieving. Elías Segado is an art appraiser and detective who has a painting stolen right out from under him by L.

"Black Wings of Cthulhu 5: Twenty New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror" (Volume 5) edited by S. T. Joshi. The Black Wings of Cthulhu series continues to bring the best in H. P. Lovecraft inspired cosmic horror stories by new and established horror authors. The popularity of the Cthulhu Mythos seems as eternal as Great Cthulhu itself and the scope and variety of these stories point out one of the reasons why.

"The Job of the Wasp: A Novel" by Colin Winnette. A new, oddly emotionless boy arrives at the school for orphaned boys in search of an education, food and shelter. What he finds is mysteries, a murder -- well several murders, strange behavior and ghosts in this horror novel that combines the coming of age tale with the unreliable narrator story.

"Palaces" by Simon Jacobs. In this debut horror novel, John and Joey are a couple in the punk rock scene in a Midwestern city when they get caught out in the middle of a full-scale riot. Eventually they find themselves riding the commuter train to its last exit to escape the fighting but when they get off. they're in an abandoned community of mansions and gated housing with no clues as to where everybody has gone.