(Editor’s note: Since 2024, Cryptid Quarterly is a feature where I highlight cryptid horror fiction from each quarter of the year, using Amazon Kindle release dates.)
After a strong first quarter of cryptid horror fiction releases in 2026, the second quarter only gets better. Cryptid Quarterly X is dominated by familiar names from previous charts, but I think this second crop of 2026 releases is a little stronger than the first.
Five authors – Luka T. Jacobs, Jeffrey B Miley, D.A. Roberts, Robby “Jed” Raines, and Michael Cole – have multiple titles ranked in the Top 20 chart, accounting for more than half of the entries.
You may wonder why I continue to spotlight many of the same authors. The fact is that many of the authors on these charts are committed to my favorite subgenre of horror: cryptid fiction. Some are cranking out multiple releases – many of novella length and well reviewed – every quarter, keeping readers like me in constant supply of their favorite fiction.
Trust me. I’m always on the lookout for new authors and new titles of cryptid fiction as I search high and low in the jungle of the Amazon website. I’m not biased. For example, my top three 2025 Books of the Year were not written by any of my 2025 Authors of the Year. In fact, six of the Top 10 books were not written by anyone in my Author Top 10. I recognize some of the best cryptid fiction is written by authors who mostly write outside of my favorite subgenre of horror. I’m always open to suggestions.
But it should be no surprise that dedicated cryptid fiction authors dominate a cryptid fiction chart. While I’ve never met any of these authors, I consider many of them kindred spirits on the subject of cryptids. They write entertaining, often fast-paced and action-packed, stories about the subjects that shaped my imagination. Many of these authors are probably influenced by the same things that influenced me. I grew up loving Bigfoot thanks to The Six Million Dollar Man and Harry and the Hendersons. I read Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, and Jack London as a young boy. I love the creature films of the 1970s and 1980s like Jaws, Orca, Godzilla, King Kong, Piranha, Alligator, The Thing, and Predator. You throw all that in a blender, and I’m simply a product of my raising. My love of cryptids and creatures is so embedded in me that I even paid hard-earned money for a ticket to watch Beware Boiúna in a theater on opening day in October. And yes, I do think Night of the Lepus is underrated, thank you very much.
Anyway, back to the chart. Luka T. Jacobs hits the top of the chart for the fourth time, breaking a tie she had with D.A. Roberts for most number ones. At this point, it wouldn’t feel like a Cryptid Quarterly chart without at least one Nicole Beretti Thriller title by Jacobs, the 2025 Cryptid Quarterly Author of the Year.
Another of my favorite cryptid fiction writers, Jeffrey B Miley, keeps pumping out quality stories in his Sasquatch Adventures and Cryptid Classics series with three making the Top 20 this time around. Miley, the 2024 Cryptid Quarterly Author of the Year, is the only writer to have at least one title featured in all 10 of my Cryptid Quarterly charts so far.
Like Jacobs and Miley, D.A. Roberts and Michael Cole each have two titles in the Top 10. Roberts actually has two entries in the Top 5 with novels in his Hangman’s Legacy series and Code Name: Wild Hunt series. Cole cracks the Top 10 with a standalone novella about an anaconda-saltwater crocodile hybrid and Book 7 of his G.O.R.E. Sector series.
We also have four newcomers to the chart with stories about a ravenous Mosasaurus in the English Channel, a Tyrannosaurus rex in Antarctica, a prehistoric ocean predator in Hope Bay, and dinosaurs in Oklahoma.
Without further ado, here are my Top 20 cryptid horror fiction releases from April 1 through June 30, 2026, along with their Amazon descriptions. Clicking on the book titles takes you to their Amazon pages where they can be purchased.
#1. Before & After the Sasquatch by Luka T. Jacobs
Publication date: June 30, 2026
Length: 332 pages
Amazon rating: 4.8
Amazon description: Subtitled Nathan Ward: The Road to APEX Jaegers, Before & After the Sasquatch is a suspense-filled cryptid thriller and the origin story of one of the most important characters in the Nicole Beretti universe. At 25 years old, Nathan Ward returns to the small town in northern Washington where he spent every summer with his grandparents. Weeks earlier, while still serving overseas, he learned that his grandfather had passed away, leaving Nathan the family home. Unsure what comes next after completing two military tours, Nathan reconnects with his lifelong best friend, Gabe, and tries to settle back into civilian life. A hunting trip into the surrounding wilderness should be a welcome distraction. Instead, it becomes a nightmare. Deep in the forest, the two friends encounter something neither knew could exist. Something that turns an ordinary hunting trip into the most terrifying experience of their lives. The experience leaves Gabe desperate to forget what happened. Nathan can’t. When local authorities dismiss his claims and friends laugh off his warnings, Nathan finds himself standing alone against a threat no one else will acknowledge. As strange activity begins surrounding his property, he realizes the creature hasn’t stayed in the woods. It followed him home. Forced to defend himself against a threat unlike anything he has ever faced, Nathan discovers a harsh truth: when the unimaginable becomes real, no one is coming to save you. The events that unfold will change the course of his life forever, setting him on the path that will one day lead to the FBI and the creation of APEX Jaegers.
#2. Lost Treasure of the Sangre De Cristos by D.A. Roberts
Publication date: May 25, 2026
Length: 614 pages
Amazon rating: 4.8
Amazon description: Book 2 of the Hangman’s Legacy series. RC Sandoval has faced monsters, killers, and the ghosts of his own past — but nothing in his life prepared him for what waits in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When a legendary lost treasure resurfaces, RC is pulled into a deadly hunt that cuts through abandoned mining camps, cartel‑scarred borderlands, and the haunted high country where the land itself feels alive … and hungry. What starts as a search for answers becomes a fight for survival against a creature born of frontier violence, starvation, and the unforgiving mountains. As bodies fall and old wounds reopen, RC must rely on the few people he trusts — warriors shaped by trauma, loyalty, and the kind of battles no badge ever prepares you for. But the enemy stalking them isn’t just another predator. It’s a relic of the Old West, a thing shaped by blood‑memory and vengeance, guarding a secret that was never meant to be found. To protect his family, his town, and the legacy he never asked for, RC must confront a truth older than the frontier: Some treasures were buried for a reason. Some legends kill to stay hidden.
#3. APEX by Luka T. Jacobs
Publication date: May 31, 2026
Length: 279 pages
Amazon rating: 4.7
Amazon description: Book 9 in the Nicole Beretti Thriller series. Sheriff Cole Mitchell arrives in Thorn County, Illinois, to find seven missing persons and a string of mutilated bodies the previous sheriff failed to investigate. Then a garbage worker is dragged screaming into a cornfield in broad daylight. Forced to call the FBI, Cole teams with Special Agents Nicole Beretti, Noah Jacobi, and newcomer Agent Riley Brooks who uncover a disturbing secret buried deep in the rural county. For years, a former resident fed what she believed were harmless Sasquatch living near her property. Then new tenants moved in. Gunfire replaced food. And now a vengeful apex predator that once trusted humans has learned to hate them … and hunt them.
#4. Leviathan Down by D.A. Roberts
Publication date: April 25, 2026
Length: 333 pages
Amazon rating: 4.7
Amazon description: Book 5 in the Code Name: Wild Hunt series. When the classified deep sea prototype USS Leviathan (X-241) vanishes near the Laurentian Abyss, the Navy scrambles for answers. Minutes later, the USS Seawolf (SSN-21) records a sonar contact that is colossal, biological, and accelerating. Then the ocean swallows it whole. Team Odin deploys the new ORCA Platoon, a 16-operator unit drawn from the most lethal Naval Special Warfare teams on the planet. Their mission takes them into the abyss in DS-RAX Armor, advanced technology engineered by DARPA and the Skunkworks Division at Nidavellir for trench warfare, spectral anomalies, and zero visibility combat. What they find below the thermocline defies science. Reality bends. Pressure destroys steel. Something ancient begins to rise. In the frozen dark of the North Atlantic, the truth behind Viking legends waits in the deep. A predator older than myth has awakened, and it intends to bring down the Gods themselves. Team Odin knows one thing. In the darkness, legends are born in blood and steel. And the abyss never returns what it takes. The mission is no longer about recovery. It’s survival. Because below the thermocline, no one is safe.
#5. The Old Hunting Lodge by Jeffrey B Miley
Publication date: June 21, 2026
Length: 166 pages
Amazon rating: 4.4
Amazon description: Book 61 in Miley’s Sasquatch Adventures series. Sometimes the things we inherit are a blessing, and sometimes they are a curse. Keith McKenzie and his friends are placed in the unenviable position of trying to decide which it is for Keith. They are committed to bringing the old hunting lodge back to life. But there is a beast in the forest who is just as committed to stopping them. This is all played out in the beautiful state of Alaska during the beginning of its endless summer days. The fear the beast causes becomes endless as well.
#6. Blood Viper by Michael Cole
Publication date: May 5, 2026
Length: 166 pages
Amazon rating: 4.4
Amazon description: It was intended to be the ultimate weapon. Spliced from the DNA of the anaconda and the saltwater crocodile, it was designed to take out combatants in any kind of terrain. But manipulating mother nature has serious consequences. Escaping from its transport, the beast finds itself in Creed Forest. Driven by a built-in desire to kill, it combs through the woods, killing anything and anyone in its path. Before long, it finds the ultimate buffet, as a group of filmmakers have set up camp near the lake. Meanwhile, its creator seeks to get it back. Alongside a squad of ruthless contractors, he tracks the beast into the woods. The result is a killing spree as Dr. Parker’s precious Blood Viper proves to be deadlier than even he imagined.
#7. Gunner and the Sasquatch Hunter: The Catskills by Jeffrey B Miley
Publication date: May 14, 2026
Length: 150 pages
Amazon rating: 4.6
Amazon description: Book 60 in Miley’s Sasquatch Adventures series. Gunner, the Sasquatch exterminator for the National Forest Service, is called to the Catskills to eliminate a Sasquatch that turns out to be two creatures working in tandem. He asks his superiors for help and they call Rudy Moretti, the Sasquatch hunter for the National Park Service. The two men meet and work together to take down the two Sasquatches who are on a murderous spree. In the process, more are killed. And one of them may not make it out of this assignment alive.
#8. Black Site by Michael Cole
Publication date: April 21, 2026
Length: 141 pages
Amazon rating: 4.6
Amazon description: Book 7 of the G.O.R.E Sector series. Following the warning given by Senator Stephen Yuel in his dying breath, Raptor Pack travels far to Iraq. At the village of Taza, they unite with a band of freedom fighters to liberate the area from a local terrorist group. Following a successful campaign to eliminate all hostiles from the village, Raptor Pack moves east to investigate the black site Starless and hopefully locate the mercenary Moran and stop him from removing the meteorite sample stored in the sublevels. What they find is the deadly aftermath of a deadly awakening. Bodies line the corridors. Blood paints the bulkheads. Tapping sounds echo from afar. In their hunt for Moran, Raptor Pack finds something worse — a pack of bloodthirsty centipedes, freed from their stasis tubes, now eager to tear into warm flesh.
#9. Valley Of Bones by Robby “Jed” Raines
Publication date: May 24, 2026
Length: 307 pages
Amazon rating: 4.4
Amazon description: When a classified research team vanishes deep within an uncharted jungle valley, a Marine reconnaissance unit is deployed to find them. What begins as a routine search-and-rescue quickly turns into something far worse. The valley is wrong. The terrain doesn’t match satellite imagery. The ecosystem defies explanation. And the deeper they go, the more one truth becomes impossible to ignore: Everything in this place should be extinct. As the team pushes forward, the mission changes. It’s no longer about finding the missing scientists. It’s about surviving what’s hunting them. Cut off, outmatched, and running out of time, Staff Sergeant Keller and his Marines are forced into a fight against creatures that should exist only as fossils — and a world that never followed the rules of extinction. Because in the Valley of Bones, the past isn’t dead … it’s waiting.
#10. Channel Beast by John Rust
Publication date: June 16, 2026
Length: 364 pages
Amazon rating: 4.3
Amazon description: A routine ferry trip across the English Channel turns into a horrific ordeal when the vessel suddenly sinks, killing hundreds. The world is shocked to learn the cause of this disaster … a Mosasaurus! Fifty feet long, it was the apex predator of the ocean millions of years ago before supposedly going extinct. Now it’s back, and ravenous. Jack and Karen Rastun and their team of elite cryptid hunters from the FUBI join forces with the Royal Navy to hunt down the creature. As more ships are attacked and conventional means fail, the Rastuns come up with a desperate plan to stop this deadly relic of the past. But standing in their way are a naval officer with a personal agenda, a literal ticking time bomb below the waves, and a multi-billionaire who will do all he can to save the Mosasaurus … including waging war on the FUBI.
#11. Vietnam’s Tiger Man by Jeffrey B Miley
Publication date: June 6, 2026
Length: 132 pages
Amazon rating: 4.5
Amazon description: Book 13 in Miley’s Cryptid Classics series. Deep in the jungles of Vietnam, legend says there is a race of creatures that are tigers that can walk upright like a man … smarter than a regular tiger and more reclusive. The Vietnam War had soldiers from both sides traveling through the jungle both day and night. Eventually the invasion of their habitat brings a squad of American soldiers in contact with one of the mythical creatures. It is killed. A tiger cub emerges from the jungle, and the soldiers realize they have killed a tiger woman. And one man is so smitten that he cannot leave the cub behind. What follows is both horrific and sad, and that soldier must deal with the consequences of his actions many years later. The cub grows into a tiger man, and many people find themselves victims of its anger and confusion. The whole while it yearns to find the man who is responsible for its life.
#12. Blood Wolves of the Ardennes by Robby “Jed” Raines
Publication date: May 15, 2026
Length: 380 pages
Amazon rating: 4.2
Amazon description: Book 1 of the Dark Frontiers: War Journals series. December 1944. The Ardennes Forest. The war has turned. The cold has set in. And something in the woods is hunting men. When Easy Company is pushed to the breaking point during the Battle of the Bulge, a specialized unit known only as the Nightmare Hunters is sent into the frozen dark to investigate reports no command structure is willing to put into writing. Men torn apart without gunfire. Patrols vanishing without a trace. Tracks that don’t belong to any known enemy. At the center of it all is Sergeant Jed Raines — a man who walks into the woods alone when others won’t, and a Hunter who knows that not everything wearing a uniform is human. But what they find in the Ardennes is more than a weapon. More than an experiment. It is something controlled. Something ancient. And it is learning. As the line begins to collapse and the forest closes in, Jed and the Hunters will be forced into a fight that pushes them beyond the limits of flesh, faith, and survival itself. Because this time they are not the only ones hunting.
#13. Acro by Michael Cole
Publication date: June 22, 2026
Length: 154 pages
Amazon rating: 4.4
Amazon description: It was one of the largest predators of its era. It weighed 10 tons, hunted sauropods 10 times the size of a modern-day elephant, and possessed a bite power capable of crushing steel. 65 million years ago it perished with all of its prehistoric relatives. Thanks to the miracles of science, it has returned. But ‘miracle’ proves not to be the right word, for the beast is angry and has a lust for blood. Having escaped from its paddock, it rages across the company reservation where it was housed, killing everyone unlucky enough to be in its path. Led by Army veteran Jethro Hairston, the camp’s defense forces race against the clock to subdue the creature and prevent further casualties.
#14. The Arena by Jason Rubis
Publication date: April 27, 2026
Length: 121 pages
Amazon rating: 4.4
Amazon description: Book 1 in the Task Force E Origins series. Task Force E Origins explains how the team began the journey from monster wranglers to a strange twilight world of shifting realities and supernatural beings. In The Arena, we follow Smithy and his crew as they journey to an impoverished Washington logging town where bar owner Red Malone has set up a most unusual side business. It’s a place called the Arena, where men pay to pit their strength and fighting skill against legendary creatures that shouldn’t exist in our world. Creatures who call themselves the Old People, but are known to us as Bigfoot, Mountain Devil, or Sasquatch. Whatever name you give them, they don’t take kindly to being used for human entertainment. It makes them mad, and when the Old People get mad, us puny humans tend to die. The Task Force can only hope they have time to set things right.
#15. Tyrannosaurus Tundra by Sam M. Phillips
Publication date: May 2, 2026
Length: 187 pages
Amazon rating: 4.0
Amazon description: On the desolate tundra of Antarctica, a team sent to harvest the blood of dinosaurs fights for their lives. It’s the world’s greatest secret. Frozen in the ice of Antarctica are perfectly preserved dinosaurs. Sold on the black market, their blood is worth millions. It’s enough to kill for, but is it worth dying for? As the ice melts and the dinosaurs wake up, guns might not be enough to stop the rampage of the greatest predator of all time, Tyrannosaurus rex!
#16. Unleashed by Brian Maycock
Publication date: May 20, 2026
Length: 119 pages
Amazon rating: 3.9
Amazon description: Ex-LAPD detective Danny Munro came to Hope Bay for peace and quiet. As the town’s new Chief of Police, he thought he’d finally escaped the chaos of Los Angeles. He was wrong. Something massive is hunting just offshore, leaving shattered boats and mutilated corpses in its wake. And with Hope Bay’s annual fishing competition about to flood the waters with tourists, the body count is about to rise. At best, it’s a rogue great white. At worst … it’s something far older. A prehistoric predator that once ruled the oceans millions of years ago. Bulletproof. Steel-crushing. Unstoppable. The ultimate primeval nightmare has surfaced.
#17. Red Ocean by Eric S. Brown
Publication date: May 14, 2026
Length: 102 pages
Amazon rating: 3.9
Amazon description: In a modern-day Frankenstein experiment on a remote naval base, one woman is playing God. To her, life is nothing more than DNA to be altered and twisted. The military believes she will create the ultimate weapon. What she may unleash instead is … the end of the world.
#18. Croc Vs. Gator by Brian Gatto
Publication date: June 29, 2026
Length: 188 pages
Amazon rating: 3.8
Amazon description: Two genetically engineered reptiles escape their containment on a remote tropical island in Hawaii, triggering a desperate mission to stop them before paradise becomes a killing ground. One is a monstrous crocodile armed with the horns of a Carnotaurus. The other is a towering alligator fused with the sail of a Spinosaurus and a tail lined with deadly spikes. Born in a laboratory and bred to be apex predators, they leave a trail of carnage wherever they roam. As the body count climbs, the response team uncovers a web of secrets hidden beneath the island’s idyllic beaches. Along the way they encounter terrified fashion models, panicked scientists, and evidence that the escaped monsters are only part of a far more sinister experiment. In paradise, the cocktails are cold, the beaches are beautiful … and the sand is about to run red.
#19. Tulsa Triassic by Ethan Richards
Publication date: June 10, 2026
Length: 198 pages
Amazon rating: 3.7
Amazon description: Officer Edwin Rudyard thought his biggest challenge was surviving field training. Then something killed his Field Training Officer. A routine response to a distress call on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain leads Rudyard and Tulsa Police Department’s Special Operations Team into a nightmare beyond explanation. Strange tracks appear in the red Oklahoma clay. Witnesses report impossible animals. And before anyone can understand what is happening, reality itself tears apart. Now trapped in a prehistoric version of Oklahoma, Rudyard and the men of SOT find themselves millions of years from home. Dinosaurs roam the forests. Ancient giants shake the earth. Every step into the wilderness reveals new horrors that should have remained buried in the fossil record. But the monsters are only part of the problem. Somewhere in this lost world is the man responsible for the catastrophe — a radical visionary who believes humanity has become a plague upon the Earth and has found a way to rewrite history itself. With civilians missing, officers dead, and no guarantee of ever returning home, Rudyard must decide what it truly means to wear the badge. Because even at the end of time, duty remains. And when civilization disappears, courage is all that remains. Jurassic Park meets police procedural in this action-packed Oklahoma thriller where dinosaurs reign, time has broken, and Tulsa’s finest are the only thing standing between humanity and extinction.
#20. Piranha Park by Brian Gatto
Publication date: May 11, 2026
Length: 145 pages
Amazon rating: 3.6
Amazon description: The Great Lakes are about to have a very bad time. A school of genetically mutated piranha has escaped from a secret laboratory, and now people are disappearing without a trace. At first, the locals dismiss the vanishings as tragic accidents, but as the body count rises, the terrifying truth becomes impossible to ignore. The police refuse to believe it. By the time the evidence surfaces, it’s already too late. The swarm is moving downstream. With every attack, the creatures grow larger, smarter, and deadlier. Evolving at a horrifying rate, the ravenous pack tears through everything in its path, devouring the ecosystem and leaving bloodshed behind. And if they reach open water, nothing on Earth will be safe. As panic spreads and lives are lost, the people of the Great Lakes realize they are hopelessly outmatched. The feeding frenzies are unstoppable. The mutant piranhas have been unleashed. Who can stop them before the waters run red?
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Beast of Death Cavern: Legion by Michael Cole
Not of This World: Frogman by Gerry Griffiths
Volcanus by Michael Cole
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