Category: Uncategorized

Winner of the Haunted History of Invisible Women Giveaway

Giveaway prize!

Congratulations to Danielle on winning last week’s giveaway! Danielle, who has been contacted by email will be the proud new owner of a copy of A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, signed by authors Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes.

For the rest of you, I still highly recommend grabbing this book from your favorite local retailer, or buying it online and supporting The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link.

I haven’t done a giveaway in quite a while, but let me know if you’d like to see more of these!

Spooky Stories to Consume Like Candy

Looking for some quick scares to get you in the mindset for Halloween? I’ve already written a post on ghost stories that you can read to get into the spirit of the season, but shades of the deceased aren’t the only things that will send shivers down your spine. Here are a few of my favorite stories featuring all sorts of other things that go bump in the night. These stories are all available online and perfect for giving yourself a quick horror fix before you go out to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve tonight:

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Continue reading Spooky Stories to Consume Like Candy

Review of From the Abyss—Overlooked Weird Fiction

From the Abyss coverGhosts, murderers, doppelgangers, and cave bears! What more could you want in a collection of weird fiction? From the Abyss: Weird Fiction, 1907–1945, edited by Melissa Edmundson, has all these things and more! This collection of strange and supernatural stories by early twentieth-century writer D. K. Broster came out earlier this month from Handheld Press. It follows after The Outcast and The Rite in being yet another illuminating spotlight on an overlooked author of weird fiction.  Continue reading Review of From the Abyss—Overlooked Weird Fiction

Books I Edited in 2021

Reflecting back on 2021, the thing I am most proud of this year is finally kicking off my freelance editing career in a serious way. And the years of working on this blog seriously helped me to get there! I’ve held editorial ambitions since well before I launched The Gothic Library, but spending the last six and a half years writing weekly posts in which I critically evaluate books, communicate about what works and doesn’t work in a story, and build relationships with authors and publishing professionals has given me the foundation I needed to finally embark on this path. And I’ve found editing books to be even more fulfilling than I could have imagined! Read on to learn where you can find some of the books that I’ve worked on this year: Continue reading Books I Edited in 2021

Review of The Witch King

The Witch King book coverWould you want to rule over a kingdom that hates you? Wyatt Croft certainly doesn’t in H. E. Edgmon’s The Witch King. This debut YA fantasy novel came out this past summer and centers on a trans witch who escapes from a fae kingdom, only to be dragged right back into its politics and prejudices—and romance! I’ve been hearing so much hype for this book this year, and I’m so glad I finally got the chance to read it. Continue reading Review of The Witch King

Frankenstein’s Berry Bites—A Gothic Cookbook Recipe Test

As you may remember, a few weeks ago I hosted a guest post by Ella Buchan, one of the co-authors of A Gothic Cookbook, on the role of food in Gothic literature. A Gothic Cookbook, by Ella Buchan and Alessandra Pino, with illustrations by Lee Henry, is currently in development and being crowdfunded on Unbound (read to the end of this post for a discount code you can use on your pledge!). The book will feature dozens of illustrated recipes inspired by thirteen different works of classic and contemporary Gothic literature. Recently, the creators were kind enough to give me a sneak-peek at one of their recipes to try it out for myself and share with all of you!

Illustration of Berry Bite Squares from A Gothic Cookbook

Continue reading Frankenstein’s Berry Bites—A Gothic Cookbook Recipe Test

Review of The Black Moth–Of Highwaymen and Dandies

“A black moth amongst the gaily-hued butterflies…” A dashingly gothic villain steals the show in Georgette Heyer’s classic 1921 novel The Black Moth. Around this time last year, Sam Hirst and the rest of the good folks at Romancing the Gothic introduced me to Georgette Heyer, a woman widely celebrated as the mother of the modern Regency romance genre, yet whom I had somehow never heard of before. After getting a first taste of her writing with The Quiet Gentleman, I knew I would want to dive back into Heyer’s prodigious oeuvre. I decided to start with her debut novel The Black Moth.  Continue reading Review of The Black Moth–Of Highwaymen and Dandies

#MonstrousMayChallenge Recap

If you follow this blog on Twitter (@gothic_library), you may have seen my daily tweets participating in the #MonstrousMayChallenge. The #MonstrousMayChallenge is a series of creative prompts created by Johannes Evans (@JohannesTEvans on Twitter) that approach the theme of monsters from a different angle for each day in May. [Please note: Johannes’s Twitter account and the content he produces is designated as 18+ and contains mature content. Some of the tweets by others under the hashtag may, as well.] You can find Johannes’s master thread detailing the prompts here. These prompts are primarily aimed at artists and fiction writers, and if you peruse the #MonstrousMayChallenge hashtag on Twitter, you’ll find everything from tweetfic to short stories, essays, and excerpts from works-in-progress, alongside sketches, comics, and digital art. Since I, alas, lack these creative talents, I decided to put my own spin on the Monstrous May prompts. 


Continue reading #MonstrousMayChallenge Recap

Weird Fiction and the Gothic

One reason why the Gothic can be difficult to pin down as a genre is that over the years, it has spawned and overlapped with many different genres. I have touched briefly on the role that the Gothic played in the development of modern horror and explored in some depth how we can credit it as the foundation of the detective novel. Today, I want to explore one of the Gothic’s more nebulous offspring: weird fiction.

Photo of Octopus tentacles in dark water
Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

Continue reading Weird Fiction and the Gothic

September Releases Roundup

I usually only do list posts of new books coming out around New Years, so we can get an idea of what’s in store for the year ahead. But since 2020 has been approximately a million years long, and many things have changed since January, I think we’re due for a check-in. Why now? Well, there’s an unusually high number of books coming out this September—particularly in YA—which is at least partially due to the fact that many releases scheduled for the early days of the pandemic were pushed back to the fall. With so many books coming out this month, I want to highlight a few that shouldn’t get missed:

  1. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (released September 1)

Cemetery Boys coverThis book was on my original list at the beginning of the year, but its release date got pushed from June to September, so I want to make sure it doesn’t get buried! Cemetery Boys is a debut YA fantasy novel that follows a trans teen named Yadriel as he navigates his community’s gendered magic system and ends up falling in love with a ghost. If you want to hear more, check out my review!

  1. Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova (released September 1)

Wayward Witch coverThis is the third and final book in Zoraida Córdova’s Brooklyn Brujas series. If you’re unfamiliar, check out my reviews of the first two books: Labyrinth Lost and Bruja Born. Each book in this series follows a different Mortiz sister as she comes into her powers as a bruja while also negotiating the various trials of adolescence. Now it is the youngest sister’s turn: Rose Mortiz has always been a fixer, trying to smooth over the messes made by the rest of her chaotic family. One such mess is the sudden reappearance of her allegedly amnesiac father. As Rose tries to investigate her father’s past, the two of them get swept into the fairy realm of Adas. In order to make her family whole again, Rose will need to use the full extent of her powers to help heal the realm.

  1. Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke (releases September 15)

Scapegracers coverI’ll be reviewing this one next week, so keep an eye out for more of my thoughts then, but to sum it up: Scapegracers is basically The Craft meets Mean Girls, but heartwarming and queer. Sideways Pike is a lesbian, witch, and lifelong outsider, but when three of the most popular girls in school become interested in magic, they join with her to form a powerful coven. Together, they cast curses on boys, fight off fundamentalist witch hunters, and explore the impressive reaches of their power—yet the most magical thing of all to heart-hardened Sideways might be this messy, complicated, beautiful thing called friendship.

  1. Horrid by Katrina Lino (releases September 15)

Horrid coverIt’s the cover on this one that really draws me in. Horrid is a YA contemporary horror novel about a teenager named Jane North-Robinson who moves with her mother back into her mother’s childhood home in New England. But like any good Gothic setting, North Manor is full of secrets—particularly, a locked door that leads to a little girl’s bedroom that has been left untouched for decades. As Jane learns more about her mother’s past, she must grapple with grief, mental illness, and perhaps something far more sinister.

  1. Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker (releases September 22)

Vampires Never Get Old coverI cannot even begin to express how hyped I am for this anthology! As soon as I saw the deal announcement many months ago, I knew it heralded something I’ve been waiting years for: vampires are back in fashion! Well, truthfully, vampires are never out of fashion. But we seem to be on the brink of a fresh wave of vampire fiction, this time centering new viewpoints from diverse voices. Vampires Never Get Old contains stories written by some of today’s most celebrated YA authors including Dhonielle Clayton, Rebecca Roanhorse, Mark Oshiro, and many more! I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this collection and see in what new ways these ancient creatures have grown.

What are you reading this September? Are you planning to get any of these new releases? Let me know in the comments!