Josh Malerman is on a roll. His last novel, Incidents Around the House, was a horror tour de force—harrowing, heartbreaking, and impossible to forget. And if you’re one of the millions of folks who have already seen The Odyssey, you were lucky enough to witness one of the scariest movie trailers I’ve ever seen. The movie is called Other Mommy, it stars Jessica Chastain, and it’s based on Incidents. The Odyssey was excellent, but I’d go see it again just to experience that trailer again.

Like I said, Malerman is on a roll, and that roll continues with his forthcoming novel, Pictures of You.

Malerman has a knack for transforming an unlikely, even impossible, premise into deeply unsettling horror, and that’s absolutely the case with Pictures of You. This is a darkly suspenseful supernatural thriller that blurs the boundaries between art, obsession, and identity.

Let me paint you a picture without giving away too much (see what I did there?):

After waking in an unfamiliar room with no memory of how she got there, Emily discovers she has become the unwilling centerpiece of a mysterious artist’s terrifying masterpiece, one that may hold both her life and her boyfriend’s fate within its frame. As reality bends and escape seems increasingly impossible, Emily must unravel the rules of her bizarre imprisonment before she is consumed by someone else’s vision forever. Equal parts psychological nightmare and high-concept thriller, Pictures of You showcases Malerman’s signature talent for combining relentless tension with surreal, thought-provoking horror that lingers long after the final page.

Pictures of You releases September 8, 2026, and is available for preorder now. This is prime Malerman, and that’s saying a lot.