The Best Horror Book Of The Year Is Here, And Its First Preview Looks Incredible (Exclusive)
A stunning Folio Society reprint is bringing about the best horror book of the year, just in time for Halloween. Check out this exclusive preview.
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The Folio Society is bringing one of Japan’s most iconic and lasting collections of supernatural fiction to readers this fall with a stunning reprint of Japanese Ghost Stories. Arriving October 13, 2026, the 200-page hardcover book gathers 20 classic tales collected and translated by Lafcadio Hearn, pairing them with beautiful and unique new artwork from award-winning Japanese illustrator Yuko Shimizu.
Just in time for Halloween, this lavish edition from the Folio Society offers more than a collection of frightening folklore. Shimizu has created five haunting double-page illustrations, alongside cover, frontispiece, slipcase, and endpaper art, while acclaimed novelist Yoko Ogawa contributes an all-new introduction. This Screen Rant exclusive first look at Shimizu’s illustrations also reveals how beautifully the book captures its unsettling stories.
Yuko Shimizu Brings Ancient Japanese Horror To Life
Shimizu’s artwork takes inspiration from traditional Edo-period ehon, illustrated storybooks that helped establish a visual storytelling tradition sometimes described as an ancestor to modern manga. She combined that historical influence with contemporary details, creating imagery that feels rooted in Japan’s past without appearing like a straightforward reproduction of period artwork.
The exclusive illustrations, as seen in the article, represent stories that also inspired the iconic 1965 horror anthology film Kwaidan, giving the preview an especially strong connection to Japanese cinematic horror. Shimizu’s approach makes the supernatural imagery feel theatrical and eerie, perfectly suited to tales filled with ghosts, transformed beings, revenge from the dead, and other frightening encounters.
This marks Shimizu’s third collaboration with the Folio Society, following Japanese Tales in 2018 and The Great Gatsby in 2025. Her extensive career includes illustrations for The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker, DC Comics, and numerous acclaimed books, including two Caldecott Honor-winning titles.
20 Classic Ghost Stories Arrive For Halloween
Hearn’s collection explores an unusually broad range of Japanese supernatural folklore. Among its 20 stories are “The Story of Aoyagi,” about a samurai who falls for a mysterious woman; “Oshidori,” centered on a grieving mandarin duck; “The Dream of Akinosuké,” involving an extraordinary kingdom of ants; and “Rokuro-Kubi,” which follows a monk confronting five flying heads.
The collection draws from Hearn’s deep engagement with Japanese culture after he settled in Japan in 1890, eventually becoming a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo. His supernatural writings, including Kwaidan and In Ghostly Japan, helped introduce Japanese folklore to Western readers while remaining celebrated in Japan.
The Folio Society edition also gains additional literary weight from Ogawa’s new introduction. Her novel The Memory Police was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the International Booker Prize, and the World Fantasy Award. Together with Shimizu’s artwork and Hearn’s tales, the edition offers a striking new way to experience these classic stories in 2026.
Japanese Ghost Stories will be available exclusively through the Folio Society on October 13, 2026. With 20 supernatural tales, 200 pages of content, five double-page illustrations, and artwork spanning the cover and slipcase, this collectible edition book arrives at exactly the right time for readers looking for something genuinely eerie this Halloween.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.