I’ve been fascinated by dark fiction since I discovered Edgar Allan Poe at the age of ten. I don’t know why I like to immerse myself in such troubling worlds, perhaps, by experiencing the worst of human nature vicariously, these texts give us the opportunity to really get to grips with who we are as people and what we are capable of. I’ve written eight works of fiction. Wuthering Heights has captivated me, and I've always been fascinated by the two mysterious holes in the narrative: where is Heathcliff from? And where does he go when he is missing for three years? I wrote a book, Ill Will, that attempts to answer these questions.
By Michael Stewart
I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name.
Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past. Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together. Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily’s apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England. And towards the terrible misdeeds – and untold riches – that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.
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By Cormac McCarthy
This book is only loosely based on the events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, but through the Miltonic grandeur of the language, and the deeply unsettling violence of the world McCarthy builds, this vision of Hell on Earth has rarely been matched. Despite the blood and guts, the prose is starkly beautiful.
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By Ronald Bassett
Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witchfinder General, was one of the most venal and vicious Englishmen to ever live. This is a brutal novel, a veritable catalogue of horror, but a necessary lesson in man’s inhumanity and corruption. There is an authenticity here that will but ice in your marrow.
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By Colson Whitehead
This novel is fully deserving of its Pulitzer Prize. It is about a runaway slave called Cora, and it takes us from plantation bondage, on an odyssey through the dark corners of American life in the 19th century. It does this through the magical realist device of an underground railroad. The characters jump off the page and the tense and gripping plotting will have your glands sweating and your blood pumping.
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By Jane Harris
Another slavery narrative that doesn’t pull any punches. Set in Martinique 1765, it tells the tale of brothers Emile and Lucien, who are charged by their French master, Father Cleophas, with a mission. They must return to Grenada, the island they once called home, and smuggle back 42 slaves claimed by English invaders. A gruesomely compelling story.
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By Ian McGuire
A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp, and highly original novel. In Henry Drax, we have one of the most twisted antagonists in historical fiction. First-class writing and exemplary research, this is an authentic trip into the heart of darkness. A novel free of sentimentality.
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