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What to read this weekend: The unsettling new horror novel, PersonaAnd check out Bleeding Hearts, a new series under the relaunch of DC's Vertigo.
Cheyenne MacDonaldWeekend EditorSat, February 14, 2026 at 6:51 PM UTCAdd Engadget on Google
Need something new for your reading list? Here are two titles we think are worth checking out. This week, we read Aoife Josie Clements' deeply unsettling Persona, and the first issue of Bleeding Hearts, from the relaunch of the DC imprint, Vertigo.
LittlePuss Press
Persona
This book made my skin crawl, but I couldn't put it down. Persona is an unsettling, at times horrifying, novel that explores identity, isolation, exploitation and human connection under the warping influences of the internet and an economic system that leaves many people struggling just to get by. It reads like a nightmare, with prose that is surreal and disorienting at times, and uncomfortably descriptive at others. It would be hard to get into much of an overview without spoiling some key elements of the story, so I'll just leave you with a bit of the blurb: "A trans woman discovers pornography of herself she has no memory of making, only to find herself led to an unimaginably deeper evil."
Persona plays out in four parts, getting progressively stranger and stranger as it all unfolds. This one's a must-read, especially if you're looking for queer horror. But you might want to line up something light for after.
$16 at AmazonExplore More Buying Options$16 at Bookshop.org
DC Vertigo
Bleeding Hearts #1
Vertigo is back, and it's off to a great restart with the first issue of Bleeding Hearts by by Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian — a "zombie with a conscience" story following a pair of the undead in a world where humans (the living kind) have mostly been wiped out. The tone is both dark and playful, opening with a mix of sickening gore and buddy humor as it introduces us to the first of its main characters, the ridiculously named Mouse-Pokes-Golf-Ball-Out-Of-Head-Hole and Mushrooms-Grow-Up-All-Over-Like-Little-Forests.
Issue #1 is just a taste of what's to come. Per DC, "The series follows two damaged souls bound by a shared trauma they cannot outrun, drawing them into a slow-burn descent where love, obsession, and monstrosity blur together."
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