PASTE MAGAZINE MOST ANTICIPATED HORROR BOOKS FALL 2025 BARNES AND NOBLE BEST BOOKS TO READ FOR HALLOWEEN Few writers are as dependably, delightfully depraved as Clay McLeod Chapman, and few pleasures remain in this world like being terrorized by his words. Please don''t start charging us a subscription fee, Clay--with stories like these, it''d be impossible to say no!--Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary Daring and dread-inducing, creepy and clever, Clay McLeod Chapman defines contemporary horror. He holds a magnifying glass to everything we want to turn away from and forces us to look, and to look closely--Rachel Harrison, USA Today Bestselling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep Clay McLeod Chapman is a true master of horror.--CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture Masterful. Each individual story in ACQUIRED TASTE is instantly iconic, with sharp prose, dark humor, and situations that feel inexplicably real. This deserves to be talked about in the same breath as King''s NIGHT SHIFT and other such classics.--Sam Rebelein, Bram Stoker Award Nominated author of EDENVILLE and GALLOWAY''S GOSPEL An absolute blast of a collection, full of unforgettable imagery packed into tightly crafted, page-turning gems of short fiction.--Paste Magazine My favorite quasi-Kingian book is "Acquired Taste: Chilling Stories," by Clay McLeod Chapman, whose excellent shorts recall the winking audacity of King''s stories.

--Chicago Tribune Acquired Taste. will gross you out, make you laugh and get under your skin in the best kind of way. There''s a story in here for everybody, perfect for the spooky season and beyond.--Page Six From scary to unsettling to just plain satiric, ACQUIRED TASTE shows Clay McLeod Chapman using his unique voice to cover horrific moments and thoughts that reflect on both the hidden and overt things in the modern world around us.--BookReporter Twisted, tender, deranged, Chapman has a singular voice that is strange and weird and beautiful, and does not falter throughout. it is a privilege to be a horror reader who exists at the same time [he] is writing.--FanFiAddict If you''re already a fan of Chapman''s writing, "Acquired Taste" is a must-own. If you''re new to his work, it''s the perfect jumping-off point.

--Macabre Daily Chapman excels in taking something familiar and twisting it to show that there are horrors beyond belief in ordinary places.--Library Journal, starred review A literary punch to the heart--New York Times on Stay on the Line A modern horror maestro--Dread Central PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR "The Purge ain''t got nothin'' on this." Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestseller and author of I Was a Teenage Slasher "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a damn roller coaster of a novel, the kind that leaves you shaken and shrieking and smiling. Clay McLeod Chapman has taken all that''s troubling our nation in the current day and, somehow, makes it all more frightening. Rough, ruthless but you can still tell Chapman is having a blast." Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women "Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today." Jordan Peele "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes doesn''t just hit close to home - it''s a needle sliding under your skin until you bleed, a rabbit hole stocked with terror all the way down." Christina Henry, author of Alice and The House That Horror Built "A profoundly terrifying, riveting, intense, nerve-shredding modern horror epic.

With brutal insights into very real American vulnerabilities and the dangers that exploit them, this novel is the truth and a warning and essential reading. It''s also wild and scary and everything a great horror novel should be. This is Clay McLeod Chapman at the peak of his craft. Brilliant." Rachel Harrison, USA Today bestselling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep "Brace yourself. This novel is relentless and utterly merciless. Chapman takes unflinching aim at modern American culture and nobody is safe in this brutal, insightful apocalypse!" Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Road of Bones and The House of Last Resort "This is a bold badass book. Chapman has seemingly grown impatient with the vague stances and topical hints that must naturally be found in some books of an era such as ours: here he lays it out, naked, in full, what he thinks, what he sees, what he knows is happening in the spinning world.

This lens is flat-out frightening, not only for its relevance, but for how easily us readers see the same modernity of horrors in our private lives. By the book''s grand finale, the title has been twisted so that it''s no longer only a mantra for characters trapped in its pages, but for those of us too immersed in the story to turn away." Josh Malerman New York Times bestselling author of Incidents Around the House "With Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Chapman isn''t merely checking the pulse of America--he''s tapping the vein. And trust me, there''s blood everywhere. This book throbs with body horror and familial conflict and most notably, the sociopolitical nightmare we find ourselves in." Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of The Book of Accidents and Black River Orchard "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is an apocalypse of the mind that leaves no one behind, illuminating a world on fire that is too eerily similar to our own and revealing the cannibalistic nature of humanity along with the dangers of becoming like sheep--an eye-opening sociopolitical fever nightmare that you won''t soon forget." Ai Jiang, Hugo Award-nominee and author of Linghun "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is the scariest book I have read in years. It''s a book for our times and I can''t stop thinking about it.

A must read this year." V. Castro, Bram Stoker Award-nominee and author of The Haunting of Alejandra A modern American classic. Clay McLeod Chapman''s panic-inducing, adrenaline-fuelled epic digs its fingers into the cracks in 21st-century life and pries them open to expose the rot beneath. Daring, cinematic, funny, horrifying and compulsive in equal measure, this novel is akin to the celluloid nightmares of Cronenberg and Peele--like Videodrome meets Us. A vital work of contemporary horror fiction. -- Josh Winning, author of Heads Will Roll "Disturbing and dangerously prescient, there''s the dark shadow of a world-spanning blight spreading deep inside the mottled heart of Clay McLeod Chapman''s latest novel, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. A searing and deeply unnerving apocalyptic thriller executed with the true nerve of a master storyteller.

" Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke "Gut-wrenching, grief-soaked, the book perfectly embodies the panic of seeing the people you love transform into monsters. An utterly disconcerting mirror held up to the terror of our present." Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing but Blackened Teeth "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a pedal-to-the-metal, body-horror mash-up of The Purge, Pontypool, and Malcolm Devlin''s And Then I Woke Up. Chapman has an absolute gift for the unforgettably, mind-saturatingly horrific, and I shall be sending him my therapy bill." Ally Wilkes, Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of All the White Spaces and Where the Dead Wait "Only Clay McLeod Chapman can poignantly illustrate the tragedy of families splitting in American political turmoil while simultaneously serving up maximum gross-out, page-turning, balls-to-the-wall chaos. This book felt so much truer than I wanted it to. It''s devastating that I know every character, and so do you. Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is supercharged, gloriously maximalist, terrifying, and disgusting.

But mostly it''s tragic, and hits much closer to home than any of us want it to." C. J. Leede, author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture "A harrowing horror experience. Like watching through a window as the world explodes, realizing too late you should have sought shelter." Johnny Compton, author of The Spite House and Devils Kill Devils "A horror novel so prescient, it''s barely even allegorical. just a notch or two above non-fiction. Clay McLeod Chapman takes the radicalising power of far-right rhetoric to its bloody, gooey, bone-crunching conclusion - this is a gripping, apocalyptic vision of Trump-era America that rattles along at a terrifying pace.

Videodrome meets George Romero''s The Crazies meets InfoWars. It''d be a delicious piece of mischief if it wasn''t so chillingly topical." Adam Leslie, author of Lost in the Garden "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a fever-pitched maelstrom of modern-day anxieties and terrors. It''s the end of the world as only Clay McLeod Chapman can depict it: twisted, witty, absurd, horrifying, devastating, and suffused with a grief that things could ever get this bad. Or, perhaps more accurately, are almost this bad already." Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings "Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing sendup of the pitfalls of American divisiveness." Keith Rosson, author of Fever House "A sickening indictment of modern society crafted into a horror frenzy." Polly Hall, author of Myrrh "A scathing indictment of an all-too-close reality, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes doesn''t just.