A man-eating beast stalks the impoverished countryside of Gévaudan, France. Only Professor Sebastian Grave, who defeated it once before, knows the beast’s true nature and why it seems to have returned. Cameron Sullivan crafts a brilliant reimagining of the historical legend of the Beast of Gévaudan, inspiration for many a modern werewolf tale, in his impressive debut fantasy, The Red Winter, out tomorrow from Tor! Continue reading Review of The Red Winter—Werewolves in Revolutionary France
Category: Genre
Review of The Villa, Once Beloved—Filipino Gothic
“The villa, once beloved, was better left behind in all its tragedies.” You can try to escape a family curse, but in the end the sins of your past will always find you. A young woman named Sophie becomes a reluctant witness to just this sort of Gothic reckoning in The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo, which came out back in November. I loved Victor’s debut sci-fi thriller The Sleepless, so when I heard he was writing a Gothic novel set in his homeland of the Philippines, I knew I had to check it out! The Villa, Once Beloved does a beautiful job of blending classic Gothic tropes with Filipino folklore, a suffocating tropical setting, and the region’s dark history of colonialism and political corruption. Continue reading Review of The Villa, Once Beloved—Filipino Gothic
Review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter—Vampires in the Wild West
“What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” Much blood was spilled forming the American West into what it is today, so perhaps it should be no surprise this setting would make such fertile ground for a vampire tale. When I heard that Stephen Graham Jones—who has quickly become one of my favorite horror authors (check out my reviews of The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and I Was a Teenage Slasher)—was coming out with a historical vampire novel, I knew it would be right up my alley. When The Buffalo Hunter Hunter came out last March, I went to a release event at The Strand in New York City and got a signed copy of the special edition with red sprayed edges. I savored the book slowly all through the fall until last week when I got to the point where I had to stay up until 1:00am to see how it would end. Though this is my very first book review of 2026, I can already tell that The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is going to end up on my favorites of the year list. Continue reading Review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter—Vampires in the Wild West
Review of Spread Me—Erotic Horror
They say that fear and arousal are remarkably similar sensations. Sarah Gailey, the multi-talented author of alt-history adventure books like River of Teeth and more traditional horror such as Just Like Home, exploits this overlap in their recent erotic horror novella Spread Me, which came out back in September. Part re-imagining of John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film The Thing, part post-Pandemic fever dream, Spread Me is guaranteed to be quite unlike anything you’ve ever read. Continue reading Review of Spread Me—Erotic Horror
Review of Play Nice—Demons and Dysfunctional Families
Every family has their demons. But for the Barnes family, theirs are a little more literal… Rachel Harrison, best known for her monster stories Such Sharp Teeth and So Thirsty, tackles the haunted house and demonic possession genres in her latest horror novel, Play Nice, which came out back in September. If you like horror that centers on messy women and dysfunctional families, don’t miss this one! Continue reading Review of Play Nice—Demons and Dysfunctional Families
Review of Cinder House—A Haunting Fairy Tale
“A ghost was how a building held a grudge.” What if Cinderella was a ghost, murdered by her stepmother and only able to interact with the world outside the home she haunts for the three precious nights of the prince’s ball? Freya Markse (whose The Last Binding series I absolutely loved) puts a delightful, eerie spin on this classic fairy tale in her bite-size novella Cinder House, which came out earlier this fall. Continue reading Review of Cinder House—A Haunting Fairy Tale
#AScareADay 2025 Reading Challenge Reflections
What better way to spend October than reading thirty-one scary short stories and poems? Every year, Dr. Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic puts together a magnificent reading list for spooky season of short tales that span the breadth of Gothic literature. We read one story for each day of October and keep a running commentary going on BlueSky or the Site Formerly Known as Twitter using the #AScareADay hashtag—be sure to check it out to see some other folks’ perspectives on these stories! This is my fourth year in a row doing Romancing the Gothic’s #AScareADay reading challenge, and my third time reflecting on those readings in a blog post. Check out my past posts about the 2024 and 2023 reading challenges. Though occasionally a bit grueling on top of my other reading responsibilities, the #AScareADay reading challenge is one of my favorite times of year because it pushes me to discover new authors, to read critically and share my thoughts with others in a concise manner, and to stay connected to an international group of brilliant Gothic scholars and enthusiasts. This year’s challenge was no exception, and I had a great time! The selection of stories and poems was particularly well-balanced and almost entirely new to me. You can find the reading list here. Continue reading #AScareADay 2025 Reading Challenge Reflections
Review of How to Fake a Haunting
Here’s a recommendation for all of you looking for a good haunted house story this Halloween. What happens when a faux haunting becomes all too real? Christa Carmen (whose Poe-laced thriller Beneath the Poet’s House I reviewed earlier this year) explores this concept and more in her latest horror novel How to Fake a Haunting, which came out on October 7. Continue reading Review of How to Fake a Haunting
Review of America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger Than Fiction
Can Gothic literary tropes help us better understand real life? Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes certainly think so! These two queens of ghostlore who brought us A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts are back again with another nonfiction book analyzing recurring motifs in America’s ghostly folklore and urban legends. America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction came out last week and is the perfect read to start off your spooky season! Continue reading Review of America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger Than Fiction
Classics: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James
M. R. James is widely considered the father of the modern ghost story. He was a medievalist scholar and a provost at Cambridge and Eton College in the early twentieth century. He made a hobby out of writing Christmas ghost stories for his students and colleagues and eventually began to publish these stories in collections. Much of his short fiction reflects his academic background and his interest in archaeology and medieval art, architecture, and literature. A few weeks ago, Romancing the Gothic celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his final short story collection A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories with an online conference dedicated to M. R. James, his contemporaries, and the ghost story genre. Leading up to this conference, I decided to read as many of James’s ghost stories as I could. I made it through his first two collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911). If you love a good ghost story, you can’t go wrong with picking up some M. R. James. Continue reading Classics: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James