This 1000-page fantasy novel is intense, brutal (significant trigger warnings are warranted), extremely dark, and not at all a universal recommendation. I struggled with and was also fascinated by the fact that in its original form, the story was Harry Potter fan fiction about Hermione and Draco. The structure and timeline is intriguing and illuminating. This beast of a fantasy novel (it's 1040 pages) tracks a healer and alchemist suffering from significant memory gaps throug

In Wood's slim book, a practical young man is scratching out a life in a small seaside English town when an energetic young American filmmaker bursts into town. Thrills and inspiration follow--along with danger and and uncertain implications for the future in this atmospheric, eerie, beautifully written novel. Young adult Thomas Flett lives a quiet life as a shanker scraping the shore for shrimp with a horse and cart in a small seaside northern English town. He lives with his

The corruption and dark underbellies throughout, the lurking folklore figure that seems to signal death and destruction, and the despairing community history of missing women set a brooding, ominous tone, yet Salt Bones often felt like a young-adult mystery. The reveal is immensely disturbing and makes various characters' sinister suspicions feel more than warranted. Jennifer Givhan's mystery-thriller-horror novel Salt Bones  made it onto multiple best-of lists for 2025, and

This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and...

O Caledonia is a modern classic, literary fiction that encompasses darkly funny passages and tragic consequences set against a gloomy...

I was taken with the premise of conflicts and mystery in a post-colonial West African city, but I didn't feel very connected to or...

Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's...

Much of The Safekeep feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories on their...

Grey Dog begins as an immersive historical fiction story of a young teacher with a shocking past in 1900s rural England, but it becomes a...

The gothic story King Nyx offers haunting imagery, sinister mysteries, unreliable memories, resurfacing past trauma, missing persons,...

LaValle mixes a Western setting with strong feminist messages, magical realism, haunting elements, and the terrifying, freeing truth in...

Dowry of Blood is a shadowy, spooky, sultry story imagining Dracula's wife Constanta and their relationship, in which he exerts control...

Mason's novel isn't simply a historical fiction story linked through timelines. The book builds to be an often-sinister, Gothic-feeling...

Starling House is another wonderful, dark, twisty story from Alix E. Harrow, with imperfect characters, a noble, messy quest, layers of...

In this installment of Veronica and Stoker's Victorian England mystery-solving, they enter a sinister, gothic scene--and despite spending...

Niall Howard's debut is a noir story about the underbelly of life in a post-World-War-II circus, with a disgruntled clown, formerly a...

Julia Fine's Maddalena and the Dark is a gothic story set in 1700s Venice in which two young women's lives and destinies become...

I was hooked on Willingham's past and present storylines and by her unreliable narrator Isabelle, who is desperate to find her missing...

The past timeline explores creativity, love, betrayal, and unexpected loops of consequence--which are echoed hauntingly in the present...

The Gothic Undercurrents It's the perfect time of year to read some spooky, dark, gothic tales. Desolate settings, mysterious deaths,...