Team Titan's Anticipated 2024 Titles

2023 was a fantastic year for Titan Books, which a wonderful list of fiction and non-fiction titles being published. Although we are sad to see it end, 2024 has even more in store. From fungal horror to tongue-in-cheek wizardry, insightful behind-the-scenes books and terrifying arctic nightmares, read on below to see what members of Team Titan are looking forward to in 2024.

 

Daniel Carpenter, Editorial: If I had to suggest a new years resolution to you all it would be this: read more Malfi. His latest novel, Small Town Horror is the perfect starting point for one of horror's finest minds. The story of a New York lawyer dragged back to his hometown to face up to the sins of his past, it has horror in spades and kept me glued to the page until the final, brutal twists. 

If anyone is going to outdo Malfi on the twisting narrative front, it's Polly Hall with Myrrh. If you love Catriona Ward's brand of dark, psychological horror then you absolutely have to preorder Polly's incredible descent into the dark, dark side of womanhood. Clay McLeod Chapman described it as "a Daphne du Maurier suckerpunch," which seems about right. 

Speaking of Clay McLeod Chapman, I'm beyond excited for UK readers to get their hands on What Kind of Mother, a novel for which the phrase 'WTF' appears to have been invented. Palm readers, missing children, and crabs. So. Many. Crabs. It's Nicholas Sparks gone wrong and you are going to love it. 

 

Katharine Carroll, Publicity: Dreadful is a witty fantasy farce with a contemporary take on the nature of good and evil, what fun! Calypso is eco fiction that imagines a better world - all told in stunning epic verse. This is ambitious, emotional and completely unique - can't wait!

 

Kabriya Coghlan, Publicity: It’s always special to get new stories in a world you love and next month readers will get the chance to dive back into the world of Adrienne Young’s Fable series with Tides & Drift, a special volume of two new stories set in the same universe that offers both a lovely backstory and a hint of new adventures after the series for fan-favourite characters. As always with Adrienne’s writing, you can almost taste the salt air on the pages! 

Then in March, we’ve got Noah Medlock’s debut A Botanical Daughter bringing you stunning, creeping horror about a Frankenstein-esque fungal experiment that grapples with ideas about humanity and family while staying rooted in the central relationship between the experiment’s creators, Victorian gentlemen Simon and Gregor, and the life they’ve managed to establish for themselves hiding their relationship in a greenhouse sanctuary—and the lengths they’ll go to in order to protect it.

Lastly, I want to highlight The Unrelenting Earth by Kritika H. Rao, the sequel to The Surviving Sky and second book in the Rages trilogy—out this June. The Surviving Sky was such a uniquely thrilling burst of science fantasy last year and I can’t wait for all the readers who loved it to return to this world of floating cities and jungle planets and follow Ahliya and Iravan’s journeys, with the stakes getting higher and higher as they begin running out of time to save everyone from deadly storms threatening their life in their skies. If you haven’t picked up The Surviving Sky yet, now’s the perfect time!

 

Olivia Cooke, Publicity: Starting the year off with a terrifyingly, chilly injection of Arctic horror into your TBR pile, is Ally Wilke’s Where The Dead Wait. Think The Terror meets Yellowjackets as a disgraced explorer sets out on a voyage to track down his former crewmate, only to be confronted by the ghosts of his gruesome, cannibalistic past. This book is definitely not for the faint-hearted, but beyond the gore and terror lies a powerful and (quite literally) haunting tale of epic polar exploration.

 

Rosa Gómez, Sales: Everyone! Contain your excitement! 2024 brings us another Rachel Harrison book! I am a fanatic of her and Black Sheep is my kind of book, family issues and a dark twist for readers. I have also been very into motherhood-adjacent-horror since I had my child because I find it highly relatable, and Myrrh is the perfect novel for people like me, weighing on women's experiences about pregnancy, birth, motherhood and relationships, and how iconic is that cover.

 

Elora Hartway, Editorial: Do you want to fall in love with love again? Read Welcome to Forever. Do you want to question your reality (then question that question (and then the question after that))? Read Welcome to Forever. I seriously cannot wait for the world to meet Fox, one richly flawed half of the dysfunctional yet adoring power duo that is Fox-and-Gabe, and be carried away in their sweeping, psychedelic romance through sinister conspiracies and enough artificial realities to give your headtrip a headtrip. This hopepunk masterpiece will make you feel emotions you didn’t know books could make you feel, and also maybe emotions you didn’t know you could feel at all, and also probably more emotions than anyone should be physically capable of feeling at once. It’s sorta like free therapy that also needs its own separate therapy to fully recover from. So treat yourself to some #selfcare this spring and let this mad, beautiful book wreck your heart then fill the cracks with gold. 

Okay, so here’s the thing. There’s no way to talk about Basilisk without sounding like you’ve maybe lost your mind. Believe me, I’ve tried. But then I stopped trying, because I need to tell you about it and because there might also be no way to read this book without actually losing your mind. Matt Wixey has created something here that is impossible to put down, but not in the way people usually mean when they say a book is unputdownable (like they did here, shockingly). Sure, it’s a paranoid beast of ergodic fiction with a cosmic horror bite, the kind of thing that keeps store-brand literary horror awake at night. But what I really mean is it’s impossible to put down in a slightly more literal sense. It won’t let me let it go. You need to understand, it’s more than just an ethical hacker’s thoroughly annotated obsession, or the only record of a deadly online game, or an evil mastermind’s six-part manifesto. I almost couldn’t believe it when I first saw it, and maybe when you read it you’ll see it too, but there’s something in this book and you need to BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. DO NOT SEEK THE BASILISK. GO BACK TO YOUR LIFE. BE HAPPY.

 

Charlotte Kelly, Publicity: 2024 brings us My Throat an Open Grave, the latest novel by Tori Bovalino. A folk horror about a mysterious Lord of the Wood who steals unattended babies in the night. Through the narrator Leah we explore the societal pressures put on young women with a perfect blend of sensitivity and anger. It’s dark, ominous and creepy, but also romantic, lyrical and enchanting and I absolutely devoured it. Get ready to fall under the spell of the Lord of the Wood…

I can’t talk about 2024 titles without mentioning Chuck Tingle’s second novel, Bury Your Gays. Like in his debut novel Camp Damascus, it features sincere and hopeful discussions around sexuality and faith, family and love, and compassion and fear, all with Tingle’s signature horror. Also how perfect is that title and cover? I can't wait for you to get your hands on this one.

 

Bahar Kutluk, Publicity: Come to the rural coast of Puglia, Italy for a sun-baked stay. Enjoy the beach, the sunshine, the clear skies, the nature. Release yourself from the burdens of modern life, and join the Bastion in a journey of self-discovery. The Bastion are often labelled a doomsday cult, but don’t believe the lies until you’ve heard their true story as told in the Dark Side of the Sky. Francesco Dimitri has created an atmospheric feast that hooks you from the first page with its richly-detailed sense of terror and wonder. This is a meticulously researched novel (Francesco knows a thing or two about cults having spent months embedded in a UFO cult while filming a documentary) that will make you question everything until you reach its shattering ending.

If you are looking to add a fiercely imaginative and queer epic fantasy to your TBR next year, you do not want to miss Gabriella Buba’s debut Saints of Storm and Sorrow, coming in June - perfect time for your Pride Month reading. This is the first in a Filipino-inspired fantasy duology, following Lunurin, who spent the last decade living a double life as a devoted nun, but is in fact a stormcaller, the chosen daughter of the Goddess of Storms. It is full of morally grey characters, incredible worldbuilding, vengeful goddesses and epic weather magic. If that hasn’t hooked you already, there is also a marriage of convenience plot (to avoid getting burned as a witch by the inquisition), a bisexual love triangle and themes of anti-colonial revolution. Can’t wait for everyone to meet these incredible characters next year. 

Fan of existential horror of repeating loop narratives? Fascinated by the eerie, otherworldly feeling of liminal spaces and backrooms? Want to read a visceral and mindbending novella that explores the psychological and philosophical horrors of being alive? If you are anything like me, Coup De Grâce will be just the ticket. Coming in October, this novella follows a young man who becomes trapped in an endless, looping subway station. As he tries to find an exit that is nowhere in sight and walks amongst the claustrophobic corridors and many vast cathedral-esque rooms, he soon discovers that he is almost certainly not alone.

 

George Sandison, Editorial: Dreadful. Ever had one of those days that makes you think you need a change? Ever woken up and wanted to be a better person? Ever woken up with no eyebrows, your robes on fire and surrounded by terrified goblins? Ok, that escalated quickly... Dreadful is a bang-up-to-date, glorious deconstruction of fantasy tropes, populated with glorious characters - Orla the goblin chef forever has a place in my heart. Much more though, it's also a nuanced, empathetic exploration of how to bring alienated, damaged, powerful people back into the fold, with judgement and consequences, and empathy for what made them toxic in the first place. Apex comedic farce aside, it's a profound and very timely book. 

The Fan Who Knew Too Much. As a dad, it is my most sacred and solemn duty to deliver exceptional puns to all I meet, continuously from sunrise to sunset. So when I met Nev, and he told me about this book, it basically inevitable I would end up publishing it. A podcast called The First Cult is the Deepest? a convention set in Birmingham called Set Phasers to Brum?! Oh yeah, and it's also an excellently twisty mystery packed with more laughs and suspicious characters than you can shake a wobbly cardboard spaceship at.

Calypso. BEHOLD THE GLORY! Calypso is simply the most brilliant and quite entirely mad thing I have ever published. This is a majestic, galaxy-spanning war for a new Eden, fought among the crew - and their descendants - of the colonial ark sent to colonise the planet. It's steeped in classic SF lore, and also innately futurological. Oliver has returned to the epic poetry of his debut, Dark Star, (described as: "Page turning epic f***ing poetry in space.  Need I say more?") to create this propulsive, epic and iconic saga. Transhumans exploding into bloom, shattering moons, antediluvian cyborgs revered as gods, and one woman holding the balance in her hands. For me, it's a threshold moment in SF - I hope you agree.

 

Claire Schultz, Editorial: My New Year’s resolution was to push a copy of Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis into the hands of everyone I know. Imagine if Terry Pratchett and Dianna Wynne Jones played Dungeons & Dragons, throw in a garlic festival and a demon squid, and you might start to get the idea of it. Maybe. I can’t wait for you all to read Caitlin’s debut for yourselves, and to fall in love with Gav, my favourite evil sorcerer, like I did.

 

Hannah Scudamore, Marketing: One of the many 2024 titles that I'm looking forward to is Total Recall: The Official Story of the Film. This truly stunning coffee table book is packed with incredible concept art from luminaries such as Ron Cobb and Ron Miller, brand-new interviews and never-before-seen photos that will really give fans the inside story on the classic movie.

 

Cath Trechman, Editorial: 2024 promises to be a year rich with bookish wonders and horrors so I'm going to focus just on the first half or this will become an essay rather than a short(ish) missive...

February brings A.G. Slatter's next dark fantasy The Briar Book of the Dead, the story of a family of witches. their dark secrets, hidden ghosts and monstrous deeds. An intensely gripping, beautiful and brutal read, it promises to keep you up late into the cold winter nights.

Also in February is Among the Living by Tim Lebbon, an Arctic-set, edge-of-your seat adventure horror. Tim's stories embed the horror in the landscape and his set pieces are as terrifying and horrifying as any I have read.

Noah Medlock's debut novel A Botanical Daughter comes out in March. Two Victorian gentlemen living in a glasshouse embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment... A heartfelt queer horror story, packed with wit and charm and wonderful strangeness. This one is a true gem.

And in April the next collection from Eric La Rocca, This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances, hits shelves. Eric is a master of the short form and this book is a journey to some very dark places. Astonishing, moving and deeply disturbing, this one will take root in your mind and stay with you long after you turn that final page.

 

2024 is shaping up to be one of best years yet here at Titan Books. We hope you love these books as much as we do!