From Gothic fiction author Kat Dunn comes a new retelling of Carmilla that is equal parts haunting and thrilling. Hungerstone (Zando, February 18 2025) is one of the best new releases of 2025. Set in mid-nineteenth-century England, Lenore has been married to her husband Henry for a decade. A steel magnate and social climber, their marriage has benefitted fromRead More
A Haunting Gothic About Family in (Climate) Crisis: Private Rites by Julia Armfield Review
As an avid reader of all of Julia Armfield’s fiction, I was eager to pick up her newest novel. From the author of Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), Private Rites (Fourth Estate, 2024) promised to be poignant, haunting, and literary. Set in a future world where environmental disaster has flooded much of the world with ceaseless rains, threeRead More
This Queer Horror Book Will Haunt You: Model Home by Rivers Solomon
This was my first Rivers Solomon book, and from the first page, I understood why I’d heard such good things about them. Here are the opening lines: “Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why nothing I do pleases her. Maybe my mother is God, and that’s why even though she’s never once saved me,Read More
A Gory Graphic Novel to Kick Off Sapphic Spooky Season: A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll
As October approaches, consider adding sapphic graphic novel A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll (they/them) (previously credited as Emily Carroll) to your TBR. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Comics, A Guest in the House follows Abby, an unassuming small-town woman who has just gotten married to David, a recently widowed dentist, and isRead More
A Very Queer Gothic Ghost Story: The Narrow by Kate Alice Marshall
When I got a promotional email about this book, I asked the publisher if there was a queer main character, because I couldn’t tell from the description. It’s funny that I had to clarify, because this is a very queer book: the main character is bisexual, there’s an F/F romance, and there are several queerRead More
How Queer is Queer Enough?: A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Emily Carroll, and A Guest In the House was no exception. The subdued, gothic scenes of the quiet horror of compulsory heteronormativity interspersed with technicolour dream sequences were extremely effective. I felt deeply for Abby, who seems toRead More
A Genre-Bending Haunted Bookstore Story: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I kept hearing people rave about this book when it was new. I heard it was a cozy read about someone working in a bookstore haunted by the ghost of a customer. So imagine my surprise when the book begins with the main characterRead More
A Quiet & Queer YA Horror Story: A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Mira and Layla are trying to make their way to Chicago for the last leg of their college tour road trip when they’re stranded in a small town and forced to stay at the Wildwood Motel. To Layla, this is a minor setback while she’s more focused on figuring out her confusingRead More
A Bisexual Historical Horror Retelling: Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link This is a fascinating story about the trauma inflicted on women by violent men. It’s told from the point of view of women in classic novels who were tossed to the side by literary history: Lucy from Dracula and Bertha, a.k.a. the Mad Woman in the Attic, from Jane Eyre. Lucy and Bee enjoy theirRead More
Meagan Kimberly reviews White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link It’s hard to summarize Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, as this is a novel less with plot and more with vibes. But to the best of my ability, a young girl, Miranda, develops an eating disorder called pica, where she eats and hungers for things that areRead More