Tag:

Gothic

Review

Dovecombe

by Dodie Ownes

Book of the Week September 24, 2026

Between her controlling wife and the loss of her beloved stonemason job, Dorrie’s life feels empty—until ebullient Alys and her boyfriend move in next door. Chatting over the fence leads to clandestine outings to gardens and castles, and as their friendship grows, Dorrie begins to fall in love with Alys. When Alys leaves her boyfriend and returns to her childhood home, Dovecombe Manor, Dorrie sees this as the perfect escape. The manor turns out to be half burnt down and somewhat decrepit, sparking long-held anxieties for Dorrie. Why won’t Alys talk about the fire, and what are those figures in the woods? Add in a creepy housekeeper and her son; and Alys’s overbearing mother, Caroline, who wants to restore Dovecombe to its former glory, to complete the formula for this contemporary Gothic to ignite—literally and figuratively. Against the backdrop of small-town gossip and ancient folklore as well as Clark’s expansive knowledge of stonecutting, this atmospheric novel surrounds readers with a palpable sense of dread and malice.—Dodie Ownes

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Review

The Children

by Jeff Ayers

Book of the Week March 19, 2026

Guinevere and her brother, Ennis, have grown up in the shadow of their mother’s success. Edith Sharpe wrote five books in a magical series called The Ninth City, and they are beloved by millions. Their mom used their names for the main characters, and Guinevere and Ennis pretend to love the comparisons between them and their fictional selves. They’re often asked how wonderful it must be to have Edith as their mom, but the truth is that they had a horrible childhood of neglect and fear. They’ve kept their mouths shut for years, and now Guinevere has written a memoir about her childhood that is almost entirely fiction. Ennis works as a famous artist, and the two of them haven’t talked since a night when everything changed. When Guinevere learns about her brother’s newest exhibit, titled MOTHER, she worries that Ennis will reveal secrets that she’s not ready to have public. She begins to remember more as her life starts to unravel. Can she confront her brother and convince him to stay silent? Albert’s novel balances the line between gothic horror, high-stakes thriller, and a dark fairy tale. She uses words like a paintbrush, creating vivid images that will haunt the reader long after. Wow.—Jeff Ayers

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Review

The Fourth Wife

by Dodie Ownes

Hazel Russon’s life in 1882 Utah territory is defined by three things: the Mormon church, polygamy, and the men, who call themselves priests and bishops, who control both. She knows she’s supposed to suppress her sinful dreams of a monogamous life with her sweetheart and her desire for the freedom to play her beloved piano. But she must, and becoming the fourth wife of Jacob Manwaring, she’s carted far away from her home, family, and civilization. Her new homestead is shared with strangers: Sister Prudence, the most recent; Sister Abby, first wife; and Sister Flora, second wife. Federal agents are pursuing polygamists, so the family must be careful how and where they are seen. When Hazel senses something shifting in the house—the actual building— her fears about being a sister wife ratchet up. Jacob, who promised her a piano, now says they don’t have one—but what about the box piano she finds in the attic? She sees apparitions, but the only one that acknowledges them is one of the children. And who is the seemingly cursed woman, and why will the others not speak of it? And is Hazel really only the fourth wife? Hamilton, a historian specializing in Mormon women in polygamy, drew inspiration from her polygamous ancestors to create this horror story grounded in historical reality. Mormon gothic at its finest.—Dodie Ownes

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Review

She Made Herself a Monster

by Dodie Ownes

Book of the Week 12.11.25

When Kiril returns to his village of Koprivci after getting medical training in the city, he is struck once again how superstition and the Captain, the man who adopted him, control the townspeople. Preparing to set up a practice in town, he feels betrayed by Anka, his adopted sister; and friends Margarita and Simeon, who are betrothed. And Anka, just 16, will be married to the Captain as soon as she begins to menstruate, which only her caretaker Yulia can help her hide. An eviscerated chicken is found on the church steps and blood is found in eggs, all terribly bad signs for a village that is already known to be cursed. When Yana, a vampire hunter and seer, arrives, the Captain sets her the task of finding a cause for all the misfortune. Who, or what, is responsible? Could it be the pregnant widow Nina, whose husband, the village smithy, was killed by a blow from the Captain’s horse? Or maybe the Devil himself? Anka is seeking a purpose, and believes Yana can provide her with it, if she can escape the Captain. This heady Gothic debut dabbles in witchcraft and superstition while still tackling themes of betrayal and domestic abuse, weaving in stories from Slavic folklore. Eerie, haunting, and captivating.

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Review

Murder Will Out

by Danise Hoover

In this sparkling, energetic debut, we have a murder to be solved, not just for the benefit of the community, but for the health and well-being of the ghosts that abide within the Cameron family mansion that is under contention. Willow, graduate music student and accomplished organist, receives an invitation from her long-estranged godmother, Sue, to attend her wedding. The message was written long before it was sent. Sue is now dead, and Willow makes it to the funeral with just enough time to play Sue’s favorite music. Maine’s Little North Island is where she spent her summers with Sue until her parents summarily ended the arrangement with no explanation. Sue had come out as a lesbian to Willow’s parents, which they found abhorrent. After the service, the next Cameron heir is poisoned, and Willow, along with a tight group of local women, set out to unearth the truth. Her own top-notch research skills pale in comparison to those of the village librarian, who unearths essential old family facts. This is a wonderfully tangled plot, and the characters are aided in the solving by a fantastic range of ghosts. It is oh-so-much fun and leaves open the possibility of another to come.

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Review

The Devil in Oxford

by Danise Hoover

Christmas in Oxford sounds like a good idea. But as might be predicted by anyone acquainted with Ruby and her housemate and employer, Mr. Owens, that is likely a false assumption. While antiquarian books are their business, the Oxford sojourn highlights Egyptian artifacts and brings Ruby back to the harsh memories of her WWI service as an ambulance driver. Her feelings for Ruan, healer and witch, must be confronted, as must her trust in old and dear friends, including Leona, her partner in ambulance duties. Circumstances require much late-night skulking involving lockpicks and a reluctant Ruan as a partner, as well as attendance (unwilling) at overblown parties.In the end, the heroes are found and the evildoers are truly evil, but as with many books in this series, reading is easier if one starts at volume one. Smuggling, murder, and cocaine are mixed within a roiling undercurrent of social and political tension in an atmosphere of scholarship. A nicely drawn period piece.

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Review

Gothictown

by Henrietta Thornton

Locals call small-town Juliana, Georgia, “Gentle Juliana.” New York chef Bille Hope calls it her family’s best chance at a new start after the pandemic finished her restaurant. The offer to move to Juliana is incredibly generous: the ad Billie spots says that the family can buy any vacant home in the town—look at those Victorian mansions!—for just $100 if they open a business there. Billie; her husband, Peter; and their daughter, Mere, are Georgia residents before you know it and even purchase a fabulous house that wasn’t supposed to be available. In no time, Billie’s new restaurant is booming, but so is the family’s fear that they have made a bad mistake. The house has a malevolent feeling and Peter is exhausted and depressed by his never-ending search for a dangerous open well that a strange neighbor tells them is on the land. While Billie begins to fall for the owner of the store next to hers, she also starts to investigate what’s really going on in the town and why she and Mere have the same nightmares about trapped, crying children, a puzzle that readers know a little about from the book’s sinister opening chapter detailing an event in the town’s early years. This has just the right amount of creepiness to add a scary but not terrifying element to the promised gothic tale, and the post-pandemic what-do-I-do-now feeling is spot on. Read this alongside Sylvie Perry’s The Hawthorne School and start looking gift horses in the mouth.

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Review

The Specimen

by Henrietta Thornton

Fans of Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum and of unsettling fiction are ideal audiences for Fixsen’s “STEMinist” latest. The author introduces Isobel Tait, a desperate nineteenth-century Edinburgh mother. Her only child, a sweet boy named Thomas, is sickly, out of breath at the least exertion. When Isobel finally gets him to see an expert, the renowned Dr. Burnett, the boy’s condition is confirmed to be dire: his heart has a damaged valve and his life will be short. Then Thomas disappears. Frantic Isobel tries everything to find him, but it’s all futile and the police have no leads. When she gives in to a ladies excursion to Dr. Burnett’s display of medical oddities, a tiny, preserved human heart emits—to Isobel’s hearing only—the distinct rhythm that Thomas’s did (the music teacher in Isobel would know it anywhere). What follows is an absorbing and expanding mystery around what happened to Thomas and others like him, as well as an in-depth look at the work of resurrectionists—those who procured and used dead bodies to teach and learn anatomy, with competition for bodies fierce and lucrative. The story is based on real events detailed in an afterword by the author. This is ripe for a bookclub discussion on medical ethics.

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Review

Vantage Point

by Henrietta Thornton

The ultra-wealthy Wieland family seems determined to prove that money can’t buy happiness. Their pain-filled past has created a persistent myth that they’re cursed, with family members dying in spectacularly awful ways, including on the Titanic. The deaths all happen in April, and as this absorbing thriller opens, so does that terrible month. Orphaned by the curse, or so she believes, is Clara, who’s long suffered from bulimia and lives in a house on the grounds of her family’s compound in Maine. In the neighboring mansion, Vantage Point, live her brother, Teddy, and his wife, Jess, who’s Clara’s best friend and formerly a poor local. Teddy is running for the U.S. Senate and the stakes are high for the family to portray a happy, successful front, which means keeping the uninhibited Clara mostly hidden. But someone has other ideas, and a brutal sex video is released to the public featuring a much younger, drunk, emaciated Clara (details are very much on the page). It’s the first in a line of humiliating videos that Clara thinks are fake but can’t be sure, making technology an interesting plot point alongside the family turmoil. Sligar’s character creation and portrayal of family and class dynamics are superb, adding to a realistic and gripping tale with a satisfying ending.

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Review

The Resurrectionist

by Willy Williams

As the third son of a modestly landed family, James Willoughby has been told from an early age that he must earn a living befitting his station. Being of “a diminutive stature,” James decides the military is not for him. Nor is the Church of England an appealing option. Despite his family’s opposition, the young man abandons his clerical studies at Oxford and heads north to Edinburgh to become a physician. It’s 1828, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scottish city is a “shining beacon of medical discovery.” But James quickly learns that if he wants to develop anatomical knowledge and surgical skills, he must join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square. Unable to afford the additional tuition, James makes a bargain with his professor’s secretary and dissectionist, the charismatic Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, to serve as a lookout to prevent possible grave robbing in the Greyfriars kirkyard (graveyard) beneath James’s chamber window. The naive student soon discovers that he is aiding a gang of body snatchers who steal fresh corpses from churchyards for anatomical study at the medical schools. Nye explains to a horrified James that he is a Resurrectionist: “Our motivation is not in the value of the bodies we steal, but in the second life we give them.” Bedazzled by Nye’s scientific passion (and his dark sexiness), James plunges into this illicit, gritty underworld. However, their rivals in the body-snatching game, the sinister Burke and Hare, will murder anyone to corner the corpse market. Mixing a macabre gothic mystery with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance, Dunlap has written an exciting, well-researched debut historical adventure. Bizarre, authentic details, like the mortsafes, or cages, that grieving families installed to protect the graves of their loved ones, make for an unforgettable read.

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