Why am I passionate about this?

While an adjunct professor at a local Midwestern college, I taught a night course in gothic literature. It was winter and my drive was over an hour to the satellite location. The wintry journey seemed apropos of the gothic’s dark themes, eerie atmosphere, and supernatural world. Though I’d enjoyed gothic novels in the past, this course cemented my love of all things gothic. By teaching the course, I enhanced my understanding of gothic fiction through such stories as, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and Where are you going, where have you been by Joyce Carol Oates.


I wrote

The Darkness Surrounds Us

By Gail Lukasik,

Book cover of The Darkness Surrounds Us

What is my book about?

Nurse Nellie Lester can’t escape death. During the 1918 flu epidemic, Nellie leaves her work in a Chicago contagion ward…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Rebecca

Gail Lukasik Why did I love this book?

From the first line, “Last night I went to Manderley again,” I was hooked. Though I read the book in my twenties, I never forgot that opening line or the sense of menace the book invoked in me.

Everything I love about gothic literature is in this book from the isolated setting to the sprawling manor house to the sinister servants. What interested me most about the book was the psychological suspense—how the specter of the first Mrs. de Winter haunts the second Mrs. de Winter. 

By Daphne du Maurier,

Why should I read it?

47 authors picked Rebecca as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY
* 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS
* 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'

Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…


Book cover of The Turn of the Key

Gail Lukasik Why did I love this book?

I’m always intrigued by books that re-envision a classic novel or play.

This updated version of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw is cleverly told in first person by a nanny who relates the story of a child who died under her care. A smart house stands in for the creepy gothic mansion. Its surveillance system creates a feeling of paranoia and fear. The twist at the end is worthy of James.

By Ruth Ware,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Turn of the Key as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THEIR DREAM HOUSE WILL BECOME HER WORST NIGHTMARE

'Ruth Ware just gets better and better' Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

'The queen of creepy crime' Metro

When Rowan comes across the advert, it seems too good to be true: a live-in nanny position, with an extremely generous salary.

What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare - one that will end with her in a cell awaiting trial for murder.

She knows she's made mistakes.
But she's not guilty - at least not of murder.
Which means someone else is...

THE TURN OF THE…


Book cover of Beloved

Gail Lukasik Why did I love this book?

A masterpiece that I read while in graduate school, dazzled by Morrison’s artistry.

At the time, I wasn’t aware that I had Black ancestors who’d been enslaved and that my mother was passing for white, which I chronicled in my memoir White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing. Reflecting on this gothic novel now, I have a deeper understanding of Sethe and the haunting ravages of slavery. How a house and a person can be possessed by the brutality of the past.  

By Toni Morrison,

Why should I read it?

40 authors picked Beloved as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times

Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved

It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…


Book cover of The Stranger Diaries

Gail Lukasik Why did I love this book?

What I admire about this gothic mystery is how it alternates between three narrators—a high school English teacher, her teenage daughter, and a detective—without losing tension and suspense.

The plot is beautifully interwoven. The English teacher, who’s writing a biography of an author of gothic tales, learns that her best friend is murdered, and that a line from the gothic writer’s story is found near the murder victim. Her diary becomes an outlet for her fears and suspicions, until someone writes in it. 

By Elly Griffiths,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Stranger Diaries as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR. THE RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK.

'Utterly bewitching ... a pitch-perfect modern Gothic' AJ FINN, author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

A dark story has been brought to terrifying life. Can the ending be rewritten in time?

This is what the police know: English teacher Clare Cassidy's friend Ella has just been murdered. Clare and Ella had recently fallen out. Found beside the body was a line from The Stranger, a story by the Gothic writer Clare teaches, and the murder scene is identical to one of the deaths in the…


Book cover of The Woman in the Window

Gail Lukasik Why did I love this book?

With a nod to Hitchcock’s movie, Rear Window, this gothic centers on Dr. Anna Fox who’s trapped in her New York city house not by a broken leg but by crippling agoraphobia caused by a traumatic event. In this lonely house, the absence of Anna’s husband and daughter is a presence that keeps her riveted to her window.

A page turner with a tightly paced plot and crisp, smart dialogue. 

By A. J. Finn,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Woman in the Window as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD!

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by 20th Century Fox, starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore

'Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing' Gillian Flynn

'One of those rare books that really is unputdownable' Stephen King

'Twisted to the power of max' Val McDermid

'A dark, twisty confection' Ruth Ware

What did she see?

It's been ten long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too…


Explore my book 😀

The Darkness Surrounds Us

By Gail Lukasik,

Book cover of The Darkness Surrounds Us

What is my book about?

Nurse Nellie Lester can’t escape death. During the 1918 flu epidemic, Nellie leaves her work in a Chicago contagion ward to care for the wife of a logger baron on a remote Michigan island. She’s convinced the island holds the key to her mother’s murky past, including the identity of her father. Once there, Nellie is haunted by a ghostly presence that appears in her turret bedroom. 

When the body of the previous nurse turns up in the woods, Nellie suspects the nurse’s death and her family’s history are connected to a mysterious group that disappeared from the island twenty-four years earlier. Will Nellie uncover her mother’s shocking past before a killer hell-bent on keeping the island’s secrets enacts his final revenge?

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What You Made Me Do

By Barbara Gayle Austin,

Book cover of What You Made Me Do

Barbara Gayle Austin Author Of What You Made Me Do

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Barbara's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.

Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for her biological mother, she meets the adult Willem, and they fall in love. Pregnant and engaged, she moves into the family mansion, wanting nothing more than to create a loving family for her child. But the Veldkamps are cold and distant. And why is Louisa a taboo subject?

As Anneliese…

What You Made Me Do

By Barbara Gayle Austin,

What is this book about?

An expectant mother gets more than she bargained for when she marries into a seemingly perfect family in this gripping debut novel–a must read for fans of A. J. Finn and B. A. Paris.

After surviving a nightmarish childhood, Anneliese Bakker is on the mend and searching for her birth mother. But when she meets Willem, she falls madly in love and finally finds a safe place to land. Engaged and expecting her first child, she moves into the Veldkamp mansion on a stately, tree-lined avenue in Amsterdam. And yet, nothing about Willem’s family is as it seems. Instead of…


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