When you’re a woman alone in a patriarchal world, you claw your way to power by any means necessary. This is the philosophy of Lady Evelyn Perdanu in Caitlin Starling’s 2020 fantasy novella Yellow Jessamine. Continue reading Review of Yellow Jessamine—Poisons and Possessions
Review of Lacrimore—A Monstrous Mansion
“It feeds on the horrors we commit….” A malevolent, sentient house serves as the lively setting of Lacrimore, a debut Gothic novella by S. J. Costello. The book came out in 2020 and was a winner of the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Continue reading Review of Lacrimore—A Monstrous Mansion
Review of A Snake Falls to Earth
Can a snake save the world? Oli the cottonmouth snake spirit is determined to save at least his little patch of it in Darcie Little Badger’s YA fantasy novel A Snake Falls to Earth, which came out last fall. Inspired by traditional Lipan Apache storytelling, this book brings together the human world and the spirit world in a tale of monsters, magic, and family. Continue reading Review of A Snake Falls to Earth
LGBTQ Reading Recs
I know we’re heading toward the end of Pride Month, but it’s never too late to expand your reading to include more books with LGBTQ representation! In this post, I’ll be giving you some recommendations of books that feature characters across the spectrum of queer identities, based on the literary works, genres, and tropes you already know you like:
Review of The Ghost and Mrs Muir—Midcentury Ghost Romance
Would you move into a haunted cottage? For Lucy Muir, the ghost of a grumpy old sea captain turns out to be just what she needed to complete her picture of perfect domestic bliss in The Ghost and Mrs Muir. The novel was published by Irish author Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym R. A. Dick in 1945. It was adapted into a popular film in 1947, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. If you’re looking for something sweet, slow, and low-stakes to read this summer, definitely check out this classic! Continue reading Review of The Ghost and Mrs Muir—Midcentury Ghost Romance
Review of In the Vanishers’ Palace—Loving a Monster
In a corrupted and poisoned world, the worst diseases can only be cured with the aid of a powerful dragon. But a dragon’s help always comes with a price. Aliette de Bodard beautifully blends the post-apocalyptic genre with Vietnamese-inspired fantasy (and some spicy sapphic romance) in her 2018 novella In the Vanishers’ Palace. Continue reading Review of In the Vanishers’ Palace—Loving a Monster
Review of The Outcast and The Rite—Interwar Supernatural Stories
I love discovering new-to-me authors from centuries gone by, whose works could sit comfortably alongside those of Poe and Lovecraft but haven’t received quite the same attention. And no one provides better opportunities for such discoveries than Melissa Edmundson and the folks at Handheld Press. Over the last few years, this team brought us two volumes of Women’s Weird collections. Now, they are focusing in on one such weird fiction writer: Helen de Guerry Simpson. The Outcast and The Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-1938 contains thirteen tales of weird, supernatural horror published during the period between the two World Wars by this underappreciated Australian writer. The collection came out from Handheld Press earlier this month. Continue reading Review of The Outcast and The Rite—Interwar Supernatural Stories
Dracula Daily: An Internet-wide Book Club
You have no idea how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel to see vast swathes of the internet get passionate about Gothic literature! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the best thing that has happened online this year: Dracula Daily. Created by web designer Matt Kirkland, Dracula Daily is a brilliant new way to experience Bram Stoker’s vampire classic. The project takes advantage of Dracula’s epistolary format to turn the text of the novel into an email newsletter so that you can experience the story in real time. If you’re unfamiliar: Dracula is told entirely through a series of journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, and ship’s logs dated from May 3 to November 7. Subscribers to Dracula Daily will get each entry delivered to their inboxes on the corresponding date. Though we’re already a few weeks into the story, it’s not too late to sign up! You can go back and read the entries you missed in the Dracula Daily archive. I started last week and just got caught up. Continue reading Dracula Daily: An Internet-wide Book Club
Review of Ring Shout—Making Monsters
White supremacy can make people into monsters. This is as true today as it was during the heyday of Jim Crow laws and burning crosses. P. Djèlí Clark literalizes this metaphor in his celebrated novella Ring Shout, which came out in 2020. Continue reading Review of Ring Shout—Making Monsters
Review of And Then I Woke Up—Existential Zombies
“…And then I woke up.” These are the words that nearly every reader dreads to hear at the end of a story, suggesting as they do that the characters and situations the reader has just gotten attached to have been nothing more than a dream. But how about at the start of the story? Malcolm Devlin’s latest horror novel, And Then I Woke Up, explores the struggles of characters who have just awakened from an imagined reality and must reckon with their new understanding of the world and the consequences of actions they committed while living under a lie. The book, which came out last month, is the most unique take on a zombie apocalypse I have ever read and has a particularly poignant message for our times. Continue reading Review of And Then I Woke Up—Existential Zombies