Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist and an academic. My own writing often evokes both the Gothic and the supernatural, and I enjoy the pleasures of plot: mystery, intrigue, and suspense. The popular literature of a particular culture will often tell you more about what that culture fears than the complex high art written at the same time. But where the project becomes really interesting is the moment when a writer exploits the literature of terror to investigate the human psyche and the dark side of the mind. All these tales are also award-winning films. In every case the book is more frightening.


I wrote

The Deadly Space Between: A Novel

By Patricia Duncker,

Book cover of The Deadly Space Between: A Novel

What is my book about?

When I began teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the most common error was to confuse the Monster and his Maker. Surely…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Turn of the Screw

Patricia Duncker Why did I love this book?

When I first read this famous tale, I was about seventeen and still lived with my parents when I wasn’t at boarding school or hitch-hiking around Europe. I began reading in bed late at night and couldn’t put it down even when I wanted to do so. The story begins at a Christmas gathering around a fire but moves to a large house in the country where a young governess is in charge of two strange children. I have always found children uncanny; they seem to exist at the point where innocence and evil meet. Henry James is a master of ambiguity and truly disturbing dialogue. I finished reading and couldn’t put the light out or go anywhere near the bedroom window. 

By Henry James,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde

The Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by David Bromwich
Series…


Book cover of Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad

Patricia Duncker Why did I love this book?

Montague Rhodes James, dean and provost of King’s College Cambridge, read this tale at the College Christmas gathering in 1903. James’ ghost stories often involved traditional scholars – confirmed bachelors, rather like himself. The bleak East Anglian landscape plays a significant role and here a Professor takes time off to play golf and get on with some writing at a seaside resort. He finds a strange bronze whistle in a ruined round church site. There is a second bed in the rented room at his boarding house. 

I love the thrill that M.R. James describes as "pleasant terror," but his tales are often much darker. He unveils an uncanny sexual horror in the images that haunt this terrifying story. I still see them when I close my eyes. 

By M.R. James,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Montague Rhodes James OM, MA, FBA (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936), who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as…


Book cover of The Haunting of Hill House

Patricia Duncker Why did I love this book?

One of my writer friends recommended this American novel and I’m still recovering gently. The scenario is classic: a summer gathering at a haunted house to smoke out and study the supposedly active ghosts. The research team includes a bizarre cast of characters: two disturbed young women, the heir to Hill House, a professor of parapsychology, his dotty wife who meddles with the spirit world, and her boyfriend who carries a gun. Don’t underestimate the house itself. 

What is particularly brilliant is the mixture of sinister terror and pure black comedy. I read this book in two sittings, pausing only to have a very stiff drink. The suspense is almost unbearable at times and the mixture of hilarity and horror truly unsettling.

By Shirley Jackson,

Why should I read it?

36 authors picked The Haunting of Hill House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro

Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories…


Book cover of The Power of the Dog

Patricia Duncker Why did I love this book?

I read the novel when I saw that Jane Campion had chosen to adapt the book for her latest film. I have nerves of cast iron. But I found this book truly terrifying. The subject is human evil – the sadistic, twisted cruelty of which men are capable, both to animals, and other human beings. The descriptive writing is extraordinary: the ranch, the mountains, and the wild lands of Montana appear before your eyes. The family is almost destroyed by the predatory, violent brother Phil. He is like a Shakespearean villain: magnetic, charismatic, spellbinding, brilliant, and vicious.

Campion softens the edges of the story at every step in her wonderful film. And I can understand why. Had she filmed the book the movie would be banned. Read the book. 

By Thomas Savage,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Power of the Dog as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1967, Thomas Savage's western novel about two brothers and the competition between them when one marries.


Explore my book 😀

The Deadly Space Between: A Novel

By Patricia Duncker,

Book cover of The Deadly Space Between: A Novel

What is my book about?

When I began teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the most common error was to confuse the Monster and his Maker. Surely the Monster’s name is Frankenstein? This confusion goes straight to the moral heart of Shelley’s book. The Monster and the scientist in my tale are the same person. My character, known as Röhm, is brilliant, charismatic, erotic, and evil. He is the tempter, the predator, the lover - and resistance is futile. But the single mother and her son who are bound to him do resist. Can they ever escape?

The Deadly Space Between is a book of ghosts, haunted by Frankenstein. It’s the only one of my books that I find unsettling to re-read. Even though I know what’s going to happen.

You might also like...

Curiosity and the Cat

By Martin Treanor,

Book cover of Curiosity and the Cat

Martin Treanor Author Of The Logos Prophecy

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Illustrator Reader Jester Quantum physics buff

Martin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Curiosity is certain she saw fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little does she know . . . they saw her first.

Emotionally abandoned by her mother and infatuated by a figurine of a fairy ballerina she discovers in an old toy shop, eight-year-old Curiosity Portland steals the figurine, unleashing strange and frightening happenings around her home, which, in turn, reveals a disturbing family history. 

An ominous tale of faerie folk.

Curiosity and the Cat

By Martin Treanor,

What is this book about?

Curiosity is certain she saw fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little does she know . . . they saw her first.

Emotionally abandoned by her mother and infatuated by a figurine of a fairy ballerina she discovers in an old toy shop, eight-year-old Curiosity Portland steals the figurine, unleashing strange and frightening happenings around her home, which, in turn, reveals a disturbing family history.

An ominous tale of faerie folk.



5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in ghost story, haunted houses, and brothers?

Ghost Story 177 books
Haunted Houses 85 books
Brothers 114 books