Contemporary horror and ghost stories

Salt's psychological thrillers are less concerned with plot mechanics than with the slow collapse of certainty – narrators who can't quite be trusted, relationships that curdle, and pasts that won't stay buried.

Alison Moore's Missing, Death and the Seaside and The Retreat anchor the list alongside Meike Ziervogel's Kauthar and Flotsam, Kerry Hadley-Pryce's The Black Country and Lie of the Land, and Trevor Mark Thomas's forthcoming Darker with the Day. These are novels built to get under the skin rather than race to a twist.