Word Horde

07/01/2026

Not only was yesterday release day for Carrie-Edmund Laben’s new Word Horde novel SMOKE SEASON, it’s also the TENTH birthday of John Langan’s modern horror classic, THE FISHERMAN! 🙀

Published by Word Horde in 2016, The Fisherman would go on to win the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. As much a meditation on grief as a horror epic, The Fisherman has been called literary horror at its sharpest and most imaginative.

John Langan joined Carrie-Edmund Laben in conversation about Weird Horror for the SMOKE SEASON book launch last night at NYC’s .

“As with their previous novel, A Hawk in the Woods, Laben takes the foundational material of cosmic horror and brings it into the twenty-first century with wit and invention.” —John Langan

Happy Book Birthday to Smoke Season and The Fisherman! 🥳

06/30/2026

Happy Book Birthday to Smoke Season, a supernatural tale in the tradition of Arthur Machen from Shirley Jackson Award winner and author of A Hawk in the Woods, Carrie-Edmund Laben! 🥳

Order now from local independent booksellers in the US and Canada (including Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic), many online retailers, or direct from Word Horde.

https://wordhorde.com/books/smoke-season/

06/07/2026

Huge congratulations to John Langan for winning the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection for Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions! 🥳

06/02/2026

Thanks to our friends at Lovecraft Ezine Podcast for the exclusive first look at the cover for Desert Radio, the debut novel from author Pamela Durgin, featuring a fantastic design by Yves Tourigny!

Print and ebook copies will be available to order from your local indie bookstore (and many online retailers) soon. Preorder direct from Word Horde today and you’ll also get a signed bookplate and a free ebook!

https://wordhorde.com/product/dr-bundle/

03/11/2026

Big thanks to our friends at for the exclusive first look at the cover for Smoke Season, a supernatural tale in the tradition of Arthur Machen from Shirley Jackson Award winner and author of A Hawk in the Woods, Carrie-Edmund Laben, brilliantly designed by Matthew Revert ()!

“Mesmerizing and unlike anything else you’ve read, Smoke Season will challenge your notions of what Weird and political fiction can achieve.”
—Paul Tremblay, NYT bestselling author of Horror Movie & Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep

Print and ebook copies will be available to preorder from your local indie bookstore (and many online retailers) in the US and Canada soon. Preorder direct from Word Horde today and you’ll also get a signed bookplate and a free ebook!

https://wordhorde.com/product/ss-bundle/

03/11/2026

👀!!!

Preorder Today:

https://wordhorde.com/product/ss-bundle/

COVER REVEAL!
Smoke Season
By Carrie-Edmund Laben
Pub date: June 30th, 2026 from
Cover Art:
Shirley Jackson Award winner and author of A Hawk in the Woods, Carrie-Edmund Laben returns with their novel Smoke Season, a supernatural tale in the tradition of Arthur Machen, in which Justin, a young man searching for his missing sister, finds solace in a free-thinking, free-loving commune in the Montana mountains. Meanwhile, a shadowy government agency is hellbent on destroying everything he holds dear. Smoke Season is a cathartic horror novel about collectivism, mutual aid, found family, working outside of established systems, and q***r joy in the face of oppression.
Pre-Order information in our stories 👀
This sounds so good!

02/27/2026

Word Horde is proud to announce Desert Radio, the debut novel from San Francisco-based author Pamela M. Durgin. Get ready for high strangeness, mysterious radio transmissions, government conspiracies, weird rituals, and liminal spaces in the 1990s California desert. Fans of Matthew M. Bartlett and Michael Wehunt won’t want to miss this one. Things are about to get very weird this Fall.