#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway: Women in Horror Month Week 3

Today on the giveaway I am celebrating Women's History Month with a giveaway each Thursday this month of books written by women in Horror. I am focusing on books I did not get a chance to review officially, but are titles I think belong in every public library. Today I have an ARC of a hotly anticipated May book and a finished copy of a story collection from a proven small press. Details below but first, here are the rules on how to enter:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American Library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Last week's winner was Roseann from ME. Now on to this week's giveaway. 

I have an ARC of a hotly anticipated May book and a finished copy of a story collection from a proven small press both for 1 winner. These are titles I did not have room to review personally, but I am very excited about them and think you should consider adding them to your collections, whether you win or not.

Let me start with a title that you have seen on many 2026 most anticipated titles, Bone of My Bone by Johanna Van Veen. From the publisher description:

Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal…

The year is 1635.

Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.

It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost. At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.

This one comes out May 26th from Poisoned Pen Press (who sent me this book to give away to one of you). People are already talking about it. Double check it is on order.

My second title is a finished copy by an author whose work I have spotlighted before from a small Horror press you can trust. Ink Vine and Other Swamp Stories by Elizabeth Broadbent:

Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment.

Lower Congaree is a backwater of a backwater, a poverty-stricken South Carolina town where nail salons come and go, but the Marine recruitment center never closes. Swamp surrounds it, and strangeness stretches back as far as anyone can remember.

For the first time, Undertaker Books has collected Elizabeth Broadbent’s intertwined Southern Gothic stories, including her linked novella, Ink Vine. Swamp witches and standing stones, battered mansions and shoeless patriarchs, strip clubs and roadside diners—Lower Congaree blossoms with the otherworldly, the bizarre, the outcast and the outside of time.

Ink Vine 

 “A stunning debut with a narrative voice so strong, you’ll feel the swamp breathing down your neck. Eerie and very moving.” —Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow and Wasps in the Ice Cream

When exotic dancer Emmy Joiner escapes to the swamp, she meets beautiful, long-legged Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss. But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage. As Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. Its price may be more than Emmy’s willing to pay.

I love how these are interconnected stories but also-- SWAMP stories are very popular, even with non-horror readers. This collection reminds me a lot of Alan Baxter's Tales from the Gulp series. I had a review of the third book in this series of connected novellas, The Rise, in the February 2026 issue of Booklist. 

This is a finished copy of the book which came out on March 6th. You can add it to your collection right now. Thanks to Undertaker Books for this copy which will go out with Bone of My Bone to One winner.

Back next week with my final 2 book Women in Horror giveaway.