An avid reader when young, I made the transition from reading to writing relatively late in life. It happened unexpectedly, but once I started writing I found it impossible to stop and have had twenty-eight novels published so far. Fortunately I found a publisher within weeks of completing my first novel, which was shortlisted for several major awards. Currently I am writing the 20th novel in my Geraldine Steel detective series, which has sold over a million copies in the UK alone. As well as writing detective novels, I also support up and coming crime writers as chair of judges for the Crime Writers Association’s Debut Dagger Award.
Mervyn Peake’s writing is unusual. In Gormenghast he creates a bizarre world of weird hierarchical rituals, peopled by eccentric characters, each one singular in a different way. What really brings this novel to life is Peake’s wonderfully rich prose, as he describes the destruction of an ancient social structure.
Enter the world of Gormenghast...the vast crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is Lord and heir. Gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation and murder.
Gormenghast is more than a sequel to Titus Groan - it is an enrichment and deepening of that book.The fertility of incident, character and rich atmosphere combine in a tour de force that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most…
I’m a middle school science teacher, and many of my students are “readers,” the ones that constantly have their heads in books when they aren’t dragged away by classwork. I created this list because they remind me of what I enjoyed about reading when I was their age, the environment. Characters and plots were great, but I wanted a book to take me somewhere I’d never been. Whether it was the Klondike or soaring through clouds, I needed to believe it was real, someplace I might see for myself. Vivid descriptions that provide fuel for imagination make reading more dynamic.
Jack London is by far my favorite writer of youth-accessible literature, and White Fang is one of his best. My senses came alive as I read about a wolf’s struggle to survive and adapt to changes in its environment. Reading his description of a world through the experience of an animal was transformative. The Klondike became a real and deadly place, vibrant and alive.
Born in the wilds of the freezing cold Yukon, White Fang - half-dog, half-wolf - is the only animal in the litter to survive. He soon learns the harsh laws of nature, yet buried deep inside him are the distant memories of affection and love. Will this fiercely independent creature of the wild learn to trust man again?
Richard Adams, prize-winning author of Watership Down, introduces this chilling, beautiful tale of the wild.
My debut novel, Where Ivy Dares to Grow, inherently explores many kinds of grief through the lens of a gothic novel; the grief of losing one’s sense of self to mental illness, of family estrangement, of relationships that have run their course, of illness in loved ones, of beloved places no longer being the beautiful things we remember them as. While this was not something I did consciously while writing, the gothic genre simply seemed to be a natural fit to investigate mourning in so many untraditional senses, using a sentient home and timeslips as metaphors for the way that grief can seem to shift the world and swallow one whole.
This book explores grief tied together with a mysterious death. Holly received ominous, out-of-character messages from her brother before he suddenly took his own life, leaving her to try to figure out the truth of his violent death while working through her own grief.
She finds herself moving in with Dane’s girlfriend, Maura, in her gothic, haunting townhouse, hoping to get clues and to see her own grief reflected in the other woman’s. And while this grief does bring them together, the shallowness and violence of Maura’s mourning makes it clear that she knows more about Dane’s death than she’s sharing.
This is a story of how grief can become the haunted thing that lurks in gothic halls, and the extremes that it can drive people to, completely upending one’s world.
RECOMMENDED BY GILLIAN FLYNN ON THE TODAY SHOW • “A lush, seductive Southern Gothic that’s deliciously queer . . . K. L. Cerra’s gift for gorgeous, gruesome atmosphere had me spellbound.”—Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn
A woman investigating her brother’s apparent suicide finds herself falling for her prime suspect—his darkly mysterious girlfriend—in this “creepy, compelling, and utterly original” (Karen Dionne) thriller.
“Get it out of me.”
It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in the lavish Savannah townhouse of his girlfriend, Maura. Police ruled his death a suicide…
I grew up in the interior of British Columbia, hours from the water, but my father loved the ocean. Every summer we’d take a vacation on the coast and sometimes we’d take the ferry to Vancouver Island. Oh, how I loved those ferry rides! The wind, the smell of the sea, the waves, the smaller islands we passed. When the idea came to me to setImprobably Yourson my very own fictional island, I was over the moon! My resident Viking and I took a research trip to the San Juans to help me in my creation of Vinland, and I was utterly charmed and delighted by island life.
I adore the wild, untamed island where this novel is set and the way the spirits of earth and water and forest make themselves known in eerie ways. Plus there’s the mysterious old house, Metsan Valo, the enigmatic caretaker, and his wife and the questions raised as to who (or what!) exactly they were. I’m also a total sucker for stories about characters who are faced with the challenge of accepting gifts and powers they didn’t know they had and aren’t sure they want to wield, so I was rooting for Anni. Plus there’s mystery and family drama and a touch of romance...so basically everything I love in a book is represented here.
The spirits of Nordic folklore come calling in this entrancing tale of family secrets and ancient mysteries by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Haunting of Brynn Wilder.
In Metsan Valo, her family home on Lake Superior, Anni Halla's beloved grandmother has died. Among her fond memories, what Anni remembers most vividly is her grandmother's eerie yet enchanting storytelling. By firelight she spun tall tales of spirits in the nearby forest and waters who could heal-or harm-on a whim. But of course those were only stories...
The reading of the will now occasions a family reunion. Anni and…
For almost thirty years, I worked as a cop in the back alleys, poorly lit laneways, and forgotten neighbourhoods in Toronto, the city where I grew up. Murder, mayhem, and sexual violations intended to demean, shame, and haunt the victims were all in a day’s work. Whether as a beat cop or a plainclothes detective, I dealt with good people who did bad things and bad people who followed their instincts. And now that I’m retired, I can take some of those experiences and turn them into crime fiction novels.
Having personally investigated numerous missing persons cases (not all of which ended well), I was drawn to this book and identified with DI Rebus’ frustrations with the police bureaucracy. The inner demons that are the cornerstone of the Rebus character make for a wonderfully flawed protagonist and one exceptionally good read.
The twelfth Inspector Rebus bestseller - a powerfully gripping novel where past and present collide... From the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES
'This is, quite simply, crime writing of the highest order' DAILY EXPRESS
'The unopposed champion of the British police procedural' GUARDIAN
A student has gone missing in Edinburgh. She's not just any student, though, but the daughter of well-to-do and influential bankers. There's almost nothing to go on until DI John Rebus gets an unmistakable gut feeling that there's more to this than just another runaway spaced out on unaccustomed freedom.
Haunting Adeline was tops. If you love dark romances, Adeline and Zade are it!
Adeline uncovers the murderous truths as she moves into her deceased Nana’s mansion. The story twists through the gripping mystery of her
Great-Grandmother’s murder by a stalker.
Similarly, Adeline must deal with a stalker of her own, Zade. Torturously, I
watched Adeline follow the same dangerous path, first fearing Zade but later
falling for him. I love stories that take on winding roads of mystery and
character development and shock me with every new chapter.
This story went
further, taking a dark turn down the rabbit hole of the skin trade, and may not be
for some readers, but for me, it was amazingly written and edgy. Often, I told
myself, “Only one more chapter,” but I ended up finishing the book in one day.
As a writer of Gothic-inflected suspense and horror fiction, I just can’t help it: I love to be scared! We are lucky to be in a time when so many wonderful thrillers, mysteries, suspense, and horror stories are being written and published, but I have a great love for the classics of the genre. These are the books I turn to again and again, not just to marvel at their craft and ingenuity, but to feel the skin prickle on my arms and shoulders and the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Whether for the first or the twentieth time, let these masterworks cast their spells over you.
I have been a fan of Gothic and melodrama since I first watched the 1931 film Frankenstein with Boris Karloff–and I was delighted to discover that the book is even better and so much more than what we’ve ever seen on screen.
Frankenstein’s monster is articulate and soulful in Mary Shelley’s atmospheric, dread-filled original novel, and his plight is all the more moving because of it. She wrote it when she was just 18 years old, still grieving over the death of her first child two years earlier. I feel her aching sorrow on every page.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
Ever been at a sleepover? The lights are low, the wind is rustling outside, and someone starts telling a spine-chilling story they swear is true?
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride gives those vibes. Rich and dark and a throwback to my old teen favorites like Down a Dark Hall and Flowers in the Attic, but adult and twisted and terrifying and beautiful. A fairytale in the true sense, with its midnight heart exposed, and at the same time lovely and lyrical. Like nothing else I read all year.
A sumptuous, gothic story about an obsessive female friendship cursed to end in tragedy, a marriage unraveled by dark secrets, and the danger of believing in fairy tales - the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed…
As my debut novel demonstrated, I’m a massive fan of Gothic literature. Compelling stories are found in many genres, but rarely with such atmosphere and style. The freedom and enjoyment of writing in this category are unparalleled, offering an excuse to use language your editor would prefer to eliminate from contemporary fiction.
Gothic novels took the romance genre and added elements of death, inheritance, gloomy locations, and supernatural twists. Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is the canonical example of this style.
The book features a detailed rendering of the many locations featured in the book, one of which is the oppressive castle named in the title. Radcliffe conjures entire moods in this story, and you'll be whisked along in the footsteps of Emily St. Aubert as she's spirited away by the villainous Montoni.
The book also features in Jane Austen's Northanger Abby, as Catherine and Isabella both read it.
`Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Rreflections brought only regret, and anticipation terror.'
Such is the state of mind in which Emily St. Aubuert - the orphaned heroine of Ann Radcliffe's 1794 gothic Classic, The Mysteries of Udolpho - finds herself after Count Montoni, her evil guardian, imprisions her in his gloomy medieval fortress in the Appenines. Terror is the order of the day inside the walls of Udolpho, as Emily struggles against Montoni's rapacious schemes and the…
Mike Thorn is the author ofShelter for the Damned,Darkest Hours, andPeel Back and See. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, includingVastarien,Dark Moon Digest, andThe NoSleep Podcast. His books have earned praise from Jamie Blanks (director ofUrban LegendandValentine), Jeffrey Reddick (creator ofFinal Destination), and Daniel Goldhaber (director ofCam). His essays and articles have been published inAmerican Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper(University of Texas Press),Beyond Empowertainment: Exploring Feminist Horror(Seventh Row),The Film Stage, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick.
Matthew Gregory Lewis wroteThe Monkin his late teens, and the book glows with the heat of youthful rage, gloriously unconcerned with issues of propriety and “good taste.” The title monk, Ambrosio, unknowingly sets the course for his own damnation when he has sex with Matilda, a demon disguised as a beautiful woman. As the novel progresses, this illicit affair ignites Ambrosio’s most lurid urges, and he descends into extreme depravity: he dabbles in sorcery, he rapes, he murders. Gregory writes the book’s climax in visceral detail, gruesomely describing Ambrosio’s fate at the hands of Satan. Although The Monk features two main plotlines and, in truly Gothic fashion, periodic digressions into flashbacks and tangential subplots, it is brisk, lean, scary, and fiercely propulsive.
Scarcely had the Abbey Bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Audience now assembled in the Capuchin Church was collected by various causes, but all of them were foreign to the ostensible motive. The Women came to show themselves,…
