Suffocating and visceral: Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
Scottish writer Heather Parry revels in the gothic and the grotesque. In Carrion Crow, she takes us to late-Victorian London. Marguerite Périgord has been locked in the attic of a disintegrating Victorian house overlooking the Thames by her mother, Cécile, who insists it is for her protection. Her only companions are a sewing machine, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and a nesting carrion crow that watches from the rafters.
As days bleed into nights, Marguerite’s mind begins to fracture. Her daily rituals, meant to pass the time, begin to feel threatening. Imagination keeps her going, but it also traps her, pulling her further into a world that is increasingly disturbing. The novel is heavy with claustrophobia and unsettling folklore. At its core, it is about a mother’s power mutating into smothering love and madness.
The real monsters live among us: Fox by Joyce Carol Oates
National Book Award winner and a frequent Pulitzer finalist, Joyce Carol Oates has written across genres for more than 60 years. In much of her writing she confronts violence and repression head on, and Fox is no exception.
The story begins with the discovery of a murdered girl and a car that belongs to Francis Fox, a popular teacher loved by his students and respected in his community. From there, the novel shifts between different voices, including parents, students, colleagues and investigators, each exposing another side of Fox’s charm and the danger lurking beneath it.
Oates explores the dark underbelly of a prestigious boarding school and shows how easily a community can be swayed by charisma, how silence allows abuse to continue, and how institutions protect their own. The result is a novel that feels all the more chilling precisely because the horrors are hidden in familiar places.
A haunting tale of sisterhood and possession: Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen
Johanna van Veen is a Dutch novelist whose debut, My Darling Dreadful Thing, was praised for its lush atmosphere and psychological depth, drawing comparisons to Sarah Waters and Shirley Jackson. She writes gothic stories rooted in 19th-century Europe, where folklore, repression and female voices collide.
Blood on Her Tongue is set in the Netherlands in 1887. Twin sisters Lucy and Sarah have always been inseparable. When Sarah discovers a recently unearthed bog body — a centuries-old corpse missing its tongue and internal organs, found on Zwartwater, a remote and decaying estate once owned by her husband — she becomes fixated. She whispers to it and spends hours at its side.
Lucy struggles to pull her back to reality, but neighbours insist Sarah is mad and call for her to be sent to an asylum. The novel lays bare the suspicion that has long haunted women’s inner lives. Sarah’s decline is mirrored by the damp, rotting landscape in a story that moves with the rhythm of traditional folklore.
Psychological unravelling and moral decay: Venetian Vespers by John Banville
Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist John Banville often edges into the gothic with unreliable narrators and an inescapable air of menace. In Venetian Vespers he takes readers to Venice, where newlyweds Evelyn and Laura Dolman arrive for their honeymoon. They move into the crumbling Palazzo Dioscuri, its corridors damp and echoing, the reflections in the mirrors unsettling.
From the start the atmosphere feels wrong. Laura soon disappears, and in her place two enigmatic twins appear, pushing Evelyn into deeper confusion. Banville’s prose is lush and cerebral, echoing the style of Henry James but with a darker, more modern twist. He turns Venice itself into a character, a city of masks and illusion, and uses it to explore obsession and deception. This is a haunted palazzo story that’ll leave you questioning how reality differs from illusion.
The myths families create to protect themselves: Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks
Amber Sparks is an American writer who has built a reputation for sharp, surreal short stories. Her short stories blend gothic atmosphere with feminist edge and just a little bit of humour. Happy People Don’t Live Here is her first novel.
Fern and her reclusive mother, Alice, move into Pine Lake Apartments, once a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, to escape a mysterious past. When a body is found in the dumpster, Fern starts to investigate. She discovers secret rooms, stories whispered in gloomy corridors, and old wounds that refuse to stay buried. Alice tries to protect her daughter, but she too is haunted by her past.
Sparks writes with humour and bite, with quirky, grotesque neighbours, and moments that are equally funny and eerie. This one’s a haunted house story that is also about unresolved trauma handed down from one generation to the next.
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