In recent years, the gothic genre — once considered the realm of white, Victorian-era protagonists — has had a resurgence as writers use the ideas of isolation and unforgiving communities in new ways. You pull up to a dark mansion, a Mexican woman, the guest of a white British family with their own secrets. You’re a woman in a misogynist world that won’t share its rumors with you. You’re young and followed by ghosts that you can’t shake, that your family won’t let you shake. Inaccessibility, isolation, fear, have all caught hold in new versions of the gothic genre (Get Out is prime gothic horror). So this October…join the party. The eerie party. A party with punch that doesn’t taste quite right, and you can’t find the friend you came with, and the people keep giving you weird looks. A party where you aren’t quite sure how you’re getting home. Come on in…it’s fun! Want more creepy book recommendations this fall season? Check out our lists of the 25 most influential horror novels, 18 great new horror reads, or eight horror novels about grief. Alternatively, dig deep with me into why horror novels are so obsessed with mushrooms, or into why it matters that horror protagonists make bad decisions. Content warnings for violence, death, rape, racism, abortion, parental death. Content warnings for suicide, sexual assault, adult/minor relationship, child abuse, homophobia, racism. Content warnings for substance abuse, suicidal ideation, classism, violence, self-harm. Content warnings for body horror, animal death, suicide, transphobia. Content warnings for violence, suicide, pedophilia, rape, forced institutionalization, parental death. When Ines first arrives, she loves it there. She thought it would be rigid and boring, but finds the students have rich, fun social lives. She and her slightly out-of-place, striving-for-acceptance roommate Baby grow close. But when something happened to Baby, Ines is forced to take a harder look at Catherine House and its strangeness. Is there something darker lurking behind its rules? Content warnings for forced institutionalization, substance abuse, animal cruelty, suicide. But now Vera’s back, taking care of her terminally ill mother and trying to help prepare the house for vacancy. Except that she keeps finding notes in her father’s handwriting. And she’s pretty sure that something’s hiding under her bed at night. Is her father’s ghost — or that of his victims — actually at rest? Or are there more secrets to uncover? Content warnings for body horror, torture, violence, emotional abuse, parental death. Content warnings for racism, slavery, torture, rape. Content warnings for violence, claustrophobia, body horror, child death, ableism, sexual assault. Content warnings for sexual assault, racism, body horror, violence. Content warnings for racism, violence, racist language and violence.
