Not With a Bang by Temi Oh (Solstice, £20)
The four daughters of a doomsday prepper were trained what to do in an emergency: grab their bags and head for the well-stocked bunker he had built in the garden of their London home. But when a world-shattering event occurs, the family are dispersed, individually forced to weigh their best options for survival as they shelter in place or struggle through devastated, chaotic streets. The story could suit a disaster movie (the author also writes screenplays), but it’s the complex characterisations and conflicted relationships that make for a powerfully compelling read. The characters are shown from different perspectives, and are flawed, human and real. Perfectly paced, this is a suspenseful depiction of survival amid civilisational collapse.

Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh (Borough, £16.99)
Stutley Tillinghast has lived alone for a long time. Formerly a minister in a rural Rhode Island parish, he is now caretaker of an empty church. He avoids contact with others – except when his peculiar need drives him to find someone he can kill without attracting attention, take what he requires, and then bury the body in the cellar with all the others. His life is upended by the arrival of a visitor from England, a young woman called Sarah who has come looking for her mother. There’s no possibility that Sarah could be his daughter, yet he recognises the symptoms of her illness: it is the same as his. She has become too weak to do what she must to save her own life, and he will not let her die. This debut novel, inspired by the 19th-century New England vampire panic, is a haunting, original modern gothic, a welcome departure from the usual tropes.

Atomic Coffin by Benedict Anning (Bantam, £20)
This 1984-set debut combines a cold war spy novel with lurking horrors beneath the sea. Heidi Sperling, codename Thistle, is a British field asset in East Germany, where she intercepts a message regarding a previously unknown Soviet nuclear submarine on the seabed between Scotland and Iceland. Heidi is inexperienced as an agent, but required to meet the nearest British submarine and go with it to assess the threat. As the only person who speaks Russian, she is forced to overcome her fear and join the initial boarding party. The Russian sub appears empty of life, yet something is there. After the expedition’s leader disappears, Heidi finds herself under suspicion, and realises she can’t trust her own memories in what is a creepy, disorienting journey into fear.

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden (Century, £20)
In this historical fantasy inspired by the life of Anne of Brittany, Anne is a few years older than the teenager whose marriage was arranged to the king of France in the 15th century, and we are fully in a realm of folklore and fantasy, where Breton fairies are real. No one has seen a live unicorn in 100 years, but Anne is able to encounter one in the legend-haunted forest of Brocéliande, and to meet a wild-eyed man emerging from the Lost Lands two centuries after he strayed out of the mortal world. The result is rich, immersive and wonderfully escapist.

Bad Things Happen Here by Mark Morris (Flame Tree, £20)
That a place can be haunted, or have a sinister atmosphere, is well established; less readily accepted is the idea that a resident spirit could leave one location to travel about and haunt others. In the latest novel by the British Fantasy award-winning author, the fifth floor of an otherwise ordinary hall of residence was the place where bad things happened to some first-year students. Twenty years on, the survivors find their lives disrupted by intrusive thoughts and hallucinations, until even the most determined rationalist among them considers calling in an exorcist, and decides they must go back to the source. A terrifyingly believable modern horror that will hold believers and sceptics in its thrall.