House of Margins is an eerie Gothic tale with a true crime podcast setup, a haunted house, a writing retreat, and a chance to learn something about a culture that’s not my own - basically everything I could ask for.

Jewelle Gomez' Caramelle, on the other hand, is set in approximately the same time period, the 1860s, but the life of a slave or former slave in America was a very different one from the middle/upper class of Victorian-era Austria, and the 21st century lens from which it is written is also very different. It's also telling that Gomez chose to have Elisabeth tell us her story directly, not filtered through a prologue written by a man who has placed himself between the writer and the reader.

Two words. Ghost. Cat. The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean starts in 1970's Hong Kong and had two things going for it within the first pages: One - the aforementioned Ghost Cat which can go from a sweet little baby kitten to a powerful beast in a blink and Two: a protagonist who is my age (fully baked adult) - at least in the opening pages before it jumps back to a time I've coincidentally been reading about a lot lately - the WWII occupation of Hong Kong by the Japanese followed by the influx of refugees from the Chinese Civil war. It was a crazy time for Hong Kong.)

With a spirit called “She Who Creeps Between”, there’s no question that She Waits Where Shadows Gather by Michelle Tang is going to stick with me for a while. She Waits Where Shadows Gather  is a Filipino Gothic horror novel complete with a haunted house, Filipino folklore, and a fractured family.

Maybe because I’m right in the middle of Gen X - no need to do that math, and we’re being accused of having a second adolescence (joke’s on them, we never fully escaped the first), I’ve been enjoying some YA horror lately.

In Japanese Gothic, Kylie Lee Baker masterfully weaves together the story of a Samurai girl from 1877, a college boy from 2026, the ghost and folk stories they hear, and the memories they hold into a haunting tale of loneliness, love, and grief wrapped in a supernatural mystery that is impossible to put down. 

Much like the narrator in “Her Skin Was a Grim Canvas” could not merely wear clothes, there is no such thing as merely reading a Gwendolyn Kiste work. The stories in The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own have to be savored, lived in, passages - and even whole stories - read again to relive the language or extract more meaning or wallow in the emotion - be it fear, horror, dread, grief, humor - on the dark side, of course. 

The Fourth Wife by Linda Hamilton is a feminist Gothic horror with some historical Mormon folklore that takes place in 1882 Salt Lake City, and, yes, it’s as interesting as it sounds. 

The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson is not your typical haunted house story. Hester Gardens is an entire neighborhood/housing project that is haunted not only by poverty, drugs, and gun violence, but also by at least one spirit.

The Hong Kong Widow by Kristen Loesch is a haunting Gothic tale that follows one woman who is trying to put the ghosts that have haunted her, literally and metaphorically, since she was a child, to rest.

Bitterbloom by Teagan Olivia King is a dark, atmospheric, gothic horror fantasy (with a dash of spice) with some interesting worldbuilding around death and the afterlife.

In Wolf Worm, T. Kingfisher is once again giving me everything I want from one of her horror novels: a strong, funny female hero, science doing unexpected things, and Gothic elements.

If you ever wanted to experience a real haunted house without having to experience the real haunted house, reading Temple Fall by R. L. Boyle is possibly the closest you can get.

The Wind Witch Murders by Casey Dunn is a modern Southern gothic coming-of-age novel that follows Raven, who lives with her strict religious grandmother since her mother Deanne - the Wind Witch - was sentenced to a psychiatric facility, having been convicted of the murders of two boys.

The Salvage by Anbara Salam is a gothic, feminist, folk horror, haunted ship, Sapphic love story with elements of Cold War hysteria and an increasingly unreliable narrator - and it was totally engaging. 

It’s 1962, and Marta Khoury’s young marriage is over, in part due to her affair with and the accidental drowning of her husband (and boss)’s friend Lewis, on a remote Scottish island where he was from. Soon after, Marta, a marine archaeologist, has a chance to salvage a ship from the 1800s off the coast of that same island, Cairnroch, to recover the remains and effects of “Auld James”, ancestor of the Purdies, who own or control most of the town. 

I expected Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester to be feminist and witchy, which it was. I did not expect it to be legitimately scary and somewhat gruesome, nor did I expect it to be a virtual treatise for smashing the patriarchy, but here we are, and I am here for it. 

The Storm by Rachel Hawkins is a gothic murder mystery thriller and a perfect escapist read. Populated with strong and snarky female characters, the fictional St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama has stories to tell. 

The Curse of the Cole Women by Marielle Thompson follows generations of Cole Women on Juniper Island off the New Hampshire coast whose lineage has an unusual curse thanks to an ancestor who was branded as a witch.

If the Dead Belong Here by Carson Faust is at once a chilling supernatural tale and a story of generational trauma told beautifully through the eyes of several generations of a family of Native American women.

The first thing you'll see when googling this book is "Gothic feminist body horror" - and it is that, but it's also romantic and witchy and about love and loss and found family.