Don't let all the sunshine go to your head. There are still plenty of new releases to keep you company in the dark of night. Check out j...
This Month in Horror || July 2022
It's time again to check another box on the Scaredy Cat Bingo Challenge which consists of 25 reading prompts on a bingo board. Not playi...
Crumbling Castles || 12 Gothic Fictions
Today's prompt:
Crumbling Castles
Gothic fiction is one of my favorite horror genres. There's so much to love: the old moldering estates and eerie houses, whether they be Southern plantations or Italian villas, the feeling of dread, the flawed characters, and the weather that is a character in itself. Of course, everyone knows the classics of gothic fiction like Dracula, Frankenstein, Rebecca, and The Haunting of Hill House, but here are twelve you might not have on your TBR.
The death of jane Lawrence by caitlin starling
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him.
By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.
All the murmuring bones by a.g.slatter
Long ago Miren O'Malley's family prospered due to a deal struck with the Mer: safety for their ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and have fallen into decline. Miren's grandmother is determined to restore their glory, even at the price of Miren's freedom.
A spellbinding tale of dark family secrets, magic and witches, and creatures of myth and the sea; of strong women and the men who seek to control them.
White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, the gentle Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. All is not well with the house, either, which creaks and grumbles and malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter apples in the garden when the branches should be bare. Generations of women inhabit its walls. And Miranda, with her new appetite for chalk and her keen sense for spirits, is more attuned to them than she is to her brother and father. She is leaving them slowly -
Slipping away from them -
And when one dark night she vanishes entirely, the survivors are left to tell her story.
"Miri I conjure you "
This is a spine-tingling tale that has Gothic roots but an utterly modern sensibility. Told by a quartet of crystalline voices, it is electrifying in its expression of myth and memory, loss and magic, fear and love.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.
Carlota Moreau: a young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of either a genius, or a madman.
Montgomery Laughton: a melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.
The hybrids: the fruits of the Doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.
All of them living in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Doctor Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.
For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.
THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU is both a dazzling historical novel and a daring science fiction journey. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.
Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of salt slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.
The Haunting of Las Lágrimas by W.M. Cleese
Argentina, winter 1913.
Ursula Kelp, a young English gardener, travels to Buenos Aires to take up the role of head gardener at a long-abandoned estate in the Pampas. The current owner wishes to return to the estate with his family and restore the once-famous gardens to their former glory.
Travelling deep into the Pampas, the vast grasslands of South America, Ursula arrives to warnings from the locals that the estate is haunted, cursed to bring tragedy to the founding family of Las Lágrimas. And soon Ursula believes that her loneliness is making her imagine things – the sound of footsteps outside her bedroom door, the touch of hands on her shoulders when there’s no one there. Most strangely of all, she keeps hearing the frenzied sound of a man chopping down trees in the nearby forest with an axe, when all her staff are in sight.
As the strange occurrences intensify – with tragic consequences – Ursula questions if there’s truth in the rumours about the cursed estate. The family’s return is imminent – are they in danger? And the longer Ursula stays at the estate, the more she realises that she too is in mortal danger.
The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren't real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
But now—Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire—by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil—her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead ed. by Lauren T. Davila
A faceless man stalks a woman’s nightmares in Hollywood. A Kanontsistóntie is summoned to seek revenge in a monastery. A move from the Projects to Manhattan leads to ominous shadows closing in. Two sisters discover a secret room in their farm, unearthing a sinister power.
When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead is an anthology of dark, unsettling writing from some of the most exciting contemporary BIPOC writers. Blending Gothic, horror, folklore, fantasy and fairy-tale, these eerie short stories will disturb, move and humour you. Death is ever-present in the pages of They Saw the Dead, blending with notions of home, memory, grief and belonging, as well as gentrification, white supremacy and colonisation.
Edited by Lauren T. Davila, They Saw the Dead explores what it is to be truly haunted.The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...
In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?
Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.
Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.
Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.
The Path of Thorns by A.G. Slatter
Alone in the world, Asher Todd travels to the remote estate of Morwood Grange to become governess to three small children. Her sole possessions comprise a sea chest and a large carpet bag she hangs onto for dear life. She finds a fine old home, its inhabitants proud of their lineage and impeccable reputation, and a small village nearby. It seems an untroubled existence, yet there are portraits missing from the walls, locked rooms, and names excised from the family tree inscribed in the bible. In short order, the children adore her, she becomes indispensible to their father Luther in his laboratory, and her potions are able to restore the sight of granddame Leonora. Soon Asher fits in as if she’s always been there, but there are creatures that stalk the woods at night, spectres haunt the halls, and Asher is not as much a stranger to the Morwoods as it might at first appear.
Leech by Hiron Ennes
A surreal and horrifying debut, Hiron Ennes's Leech defies our understanding of identity, heredity, and bodily autonomy.
“A wonderful new entry to Gothic science fiction, impeccably clever and atmospheric. Think Wuthering Heights... with worms!”—Tamsyn Muir
MEET THE CURE FOR THE HUMAN DISEASE
In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.
For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.
In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.
Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
Crumbling Castles
Published February 8th 2022 by Tor Nightfire (first published May 7th 2019) N ATURE IS CALLING—but they shouldn't have answered. Travel...
Review || Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Published February 8th 2022 by Tor Nightfire (first published May 7th 2019)
NATURE IS CALLING—but they shouldn't have answered.Published October 12th 2021 by Hold My Beer Publishing A MAIDEN VOYAGE… The Pepper Kay is no stranger to the open seas, but now she has a n...
Book Review || Maiden by T.C. Parker and Ward Nerdlo
Published October 12th 2021 by Hold My Beer Publishing
A MAIDEN VOYAGE…Published February 26th 2022 by Tangled Tree Publishing What happens in Vegas just might kill you. When divorcee Justin Gray wakes up next t...
Guest Post || Mental Illness in Fiction by Rachel Tamayo
Published February 26th 2022 by Tangled Tree Publishing
What happens in Vegas just might kill you.
When divorcee Justin Gray wakes up next to a beautiful stranger in Vegas on his birthday weekend, he assumes it’s just a drunken mistake. When he discovers that he’s married to said stranger in her early twenties, he insists on an annulment and assumes his life will return to normal once he gets back home.
He assumes wrong.
As the shapely blonde refuses to give him an annulment and insists the marriage continue, what was a wild weekend turns into a deadly mistake.
Murder is only the beginning.
Get ready for a tale of greed so twisted you won’t know what’s on the next page or who anyone really is until the…
very…last…page.
Mental illness in fiction
by rachel tamayo
We love our crazy, don’t we? Books like the You series by Caroline Kepnes, The Shining by Stephen King, and the umpteen other psychological thrillers that line shelves as far as the eye can see in bookstores both digital and physical.
We love these characters. They grip us. Like in The Shining, Jack Torrence and his slow maddening decent into a paranormal induced psychotic break. Or Joe, who becomes rapidly obsessed with one woman after the next, every female is “the one.” Or how about this classic, the little talked about The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G Wells in which the mad scientist Dr. Moreau moves to an island and performs extreme and horrifying experiments creating a mass of animal-human hybrid creatures?
These characters have all got one thing in common. Insanity of one form or another. History proves that little to nothing was known about the general craziness perceived in the population, and anything that was perceived as out of the norm led to people being locked away for the rest of their natural lives in deplorable conditions. Now we are left with reminders of these actions in abandoned asylums and story after story of once horrendous hospitals haunted by the long dead spirits of the abused and mishandled. This brings to mind characters like the wife in the attic in the classic romance, Jane Eyre.
But now, in the year of our lord 2022, things are a bit different, or so we like to think, anyway. Now we have the Movement for Mental Health, we have the National Alliance on Mental illness, numerous hashtags, and so many more. There is an attempt to understand, treat, and accept mental health disorders for what they are, diseases of the mind.
So this bids the question, has this changed how we perceive and create our crazed characters? In the past these sorts of characters were easy additions to tales meant to shock and frighten readers. There was no reason to explain, or even humanize these characters. They were all just “crazy” bad guys.
Now, authors like myself, tend to do things differently. Researching legitimate mental problems, reaching out for history, truth, facts about treatment and the effects such things have on others around them. All these things create reality, truth-based fiction around real illnesses that need attention. Things these people have to deal with, the uphill battle their disease creates while they and their loved ones try to seek help. It generates an entirely new form of psychological fiction. The harsh reality being that there generally is little to no treatment, very little help, and sometimes things go very wrong, and get very bad. As someone that has years of experience dealing with the law enforcement side if this issue, and has training to do so, I see both sides of this coin. Terrifying things happen due to mental disease.
Books like Jane Eyre were written 175 years ago. In the nineteenth century, they were painted as dangerous lunatics and the only solution to their dangerous lunacy was imprisonment. In the Twenty-first century, we like to think we paint them in a different light. But have we?
Rachael Tamayo is the bestselling author of the award-winning Deadly Sins series, and the bestselling award winner (soon to be re-released) Crazy Love. Before she started her writing career, she was a highly awarded 911 emergency services dispatcher with twelve years of experience and many commendations under her belt. Upon exiting law enforcement, she’s focused her writing on the dark, suspenseful, and psychological. Now Rachael uses her dark thriller as a sort of self-therapy after all those years answering 911, and works what she knows into frighteningly realistic and layers characters her readers love her for. Rachael lives on the Texas Gulf Coast near Houston with her husband of eighteen years and their two children.
author email: rtamayo@rachaeltamayowrites.com
Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads| Bookbub
Mental illness in fiction
by rachel tamayo
Rachael Tamayo is the bestselling author of the award-winning Deadly Sins series, and the bestselling award winner (soon to be re-released) Crazy Love. Before she started her writing career, she was a highly awarded 911 emergency services dispatcher with twelve years of experience and many commendations under her belt. Upon exiting law enforcement, she’s focused her writing on the dark, suspenseful, and psychological. Now Rachael uses her dark thriller as a sort of self-therapy after all those years answering 911, and works what she knows into frighteningly realistic and layers characters her readers love her for. Rachael lives on the Texas Gulf Coast near Houston with her husband of eighteen years and their two children.
author email: rtamayo@rachaeltamayowrites.com
Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads| Bookbub
Published January 18th 2022 by St. Martin's Press A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stoppin...
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