While set in very different worlds and starkly different eras, Summer Sons and Revelator are marvelous modern additions to the Southern gothic canon, full of paranoia and the grotesque (as well as the occasional jump scare).

★ Summer Sons

Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons opens in tragedy. After the death of his adoptive brother and best friend, Andrew is left with a legacy he never asked for: Eddie's money, Eddie’s sports car, Eddie’s house, the American Studies graduate program at Vanderbilt in Tennessee that Eddie picked out for the two of them and even Eddie’s roommate. Driven by grief and convinced that there is more to Eddie’s death than meets the eye, Andrew slides into the life that Eddie prepared for him, discovering all that Eddie had tried to conceal. As Andrew dives deeper into a world of sun-soaked men, racing and trouble, he is forced to deal with another unwanted legacy. Eddie’s revenant won’t leave him alone, and neither will Eddie’s research into their shared supernatural experience, a topic they had agreed to let lie. Summer Sons is raw and chaotic, driving readers through the disordered grief and anger of its main character. Mandelo’s visceral writing tugs at readers’ hearts as well as their amygdalas. Alternating between discussions of identity and sexuality, the horror of grief and an actual haunting, it is part The Fast and the Furious, part The Shining and part Ninth House.

★ Revelator

While Summer Sons deals in the present, Daryl Gregory’s Revelator is a story of ancestry and ancient powers. Set in the 1930s and ’40s, in the mountainous triangle where Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia collide, it follows Stella Birch: moonshiner, businesswoman and Revelator and prophet to Ghostdaddy, the god under the mountain. The red splotches across Stella’s face signaled this title when she was born and sealed her destiny. She would be the one to go under the mountain and commune with Ghostdaddy, bringing his word out to be recorded and interpreted by the men of her family. That is, until tragedy and rebellion struck. Stella fled, leaving her role and god behind. But when her grandmother Motty’s death calls Stella back to her childhood home and to Motty’s adopted daughter, Sonny, whom Stella has long ignored, she will have to deal with her past if she is to have any hope of a future.

Full of matter-of-fact descriptions of unthinkable horror, Revelator is both weird and wonderful. On the one hand, it tells a story familiar to Southern literature: the chaos resulting from the death of a matriarch. And on the other, it tells the story of a creature so alien that it’s difficult to wrap your head around. Perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and anyone who wished the 2000 film Songcatcher had a few more monsters, Revelator is full of surprises both fascinating and stomach-clenching.

Both Summer Sons and Revelator serve a slice of cold terror, paired with a view of humanity that is equal parts revelatory and humbling.