Tag: Gothic

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Books Recommendations

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand
Published: 1950
Book Tropes: Unreliable characters, mysterious letters, remote houses
Recommended for fans of: Agatha Christie // Hitchcock movies // Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier // Gothic literature // Wales

Katinka Jones works with a women’s magazine and starts a correspondence with the lonely Mrs. Amista Carlyon. Amista lives in a very remote village in Wales. Tinka develops a fondness for her and decides to visit her. But surprise, surprise. There’s nobody called Amista living in that old house. So who was writing those letters? And who is this mysterious Mr. Carlyon who seems to hide a desperate secret of his own?

“And in Katinka Jones, the Welsh blood of her father’s family rose up and painted for her mind’s eye, a scene she loved: the grey valley where the brave green struggled through the earth’s scarred surface under the soft Welsh rain: an old house, clinging to its hard-won foothold on the stony breast of the mountain; the river lying like a silver sword between a young girl and the companionship of men — of all men but Carlyon. ”

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Books Recommendations

The Darkangel Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce

The Darkangel Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce
Books: The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, The Pearl of the Soul of the World
Published: 1998-1999
Recommended if you like: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin / The Chronicles of Narnia / The Ancient Mariner / Gothic mysteries in general
Rating: 8.5 / 10 – Recommended!

The Ancient Ones created the world, and disappeared. The wicked White Witch took advantage of their disappearance, and enslaved and bewitched the Wardens of the kingdoms. Her evil magic has caused the planet to become a barren, perilous desert.

The Witch’s vampyric sons, the Icari, also trap the souls of human women in order to become immortal. One of them, Irralyth, kidnaps a human bride and the bride’s slave girl, Aeriel.

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Books Starred Recommendations

Mask & Dagger Series by Teresa Edgerton

Edgerton Goblin Moon

Books 1 & 2: Goblin Moon / Hobgoblin Night by Teresa Edgerton
Genres / Tropes: 18th Century Alternative History, Fantasy, Alchemy, Search for Atlantis and Philosopher’s Stone, Zorro-like Vigilantes
Published: 1991 / 2015
Similar Books: Sorcery & Cecilia by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Books by Georgette Heyer, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells, The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Rating: 10 of 10. Highly Recommended.

The Plot:

Two alchemists try to raise a dead magician who may know how to make the Seramarias Stone. Two women try to flee a vengeful fairie halfling and her troll minions. A secret glassmakers guild plans to raise a submerged Atlantis-like island. A half-mad, sleepdust-addicted Zorro-like vigilante risks all to expose black magic cartels and the slavers’ trade. And no one can make sense of the homunculus and the golem out in the world. Clearly, a lot happens!

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Art & Illustration Memes

Friday Face Off #1: Dressed in White

The Friday Face Off meme was created by Books by Proxy  and hosted by Lynn. For each week’s theme, we select a matching book and compare its different book covers across editions. Perfect for a visual fix!

(I’m obviously late to this meme, but so eager to grapple with book cover art!)

Theme for Friday Face Off #1 is:

Dressed in White – could be a person could be a landscape – or something else completely?

In Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, there is literally a character dressed in white, a mysterious figure at the heart of this classic Gothic mystery from 1859. A gallery of a few of its book covers below:

My own personal favorite from these is the Vintage Collins edition in the middle row, to the left. I think that cover captures the theme of the mysterious lady seen at night, dressed in all white, very well indeed. This has been a fun Friday Face Off!

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Books Memes Music & Poetry Watchlist

Six Degrees: Turn of the Screw & Other Spooky Things

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

October 2020’s book is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

A very young woman’s first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate…An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls… But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

What better book than Turn of the Screw for this Halloween month? Incidentally, since I am also participating in the 2020 Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) XV challenge this month, here are six spooky reads, all following up from Turn of the Screw.

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Books Memes Recommendations

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe: Book Review

Mysteries of Udolpho Cover

The first time I heard of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe was in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. (I think that’s the case for most people.) In Northanger, Catherine Morland’s fondness for Gothic novels and active imagination results in a disastrous misinterpretation, and Mysteries of Udolpho is one of those novels. Clearly, not very high praise when it comes to practical real life.

There is much villainy afoot …

… This led to the question, whether the spirit, after it has quitted the body, is ever permitted to revisit the earth; and if it is, whether it was possible for spirits to become visible to the sense … 

In Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily St. Aubere’s father similarly admonishes her to not give in to impractical sentimentality. But then he dies and leaves her orphaned in the hands of his rather shallow sister, Madame Cheron. Madame Cheron and Emily do not get along, to put it mildly. 

Emily and Madame Cheron threatened by Montoni. Copyright: Trustees of British Museum

That situation worsens when Madame Cheron ends up marrying Signor Montoni, a stylish Italian whom everyone seems to admire but no one seems to like. Montoni is the quintessential Gothic villain who, gambles, drinks, cheats, broods and schemes. (I expect he had a mustache too, which he twirled a lot as he brooded.)

Poor Emily has a terrible time of it all. She learns her father was hiding a terrible secret from his salad days. Her engagement with young Valancourt is broken off and her hand promised to another without her consent. Her home and father’s impoverished estates in France are rented away, and Montoni packs them off (eventually) to the desolate castle of Udolpho. 

Nestled in the Apennine mountains of Italy, Udolpho’s grandeur has faded with time and neglect. It once belonged to Montoni’s relative, Signora Laurentini, who died in mysterious circumstances. There are rumors that Montoni killed her off out of jealousy and to grab her estates. Certainly, nothing can be put past Montoni, who it turns out is now leading a band of mercenaries, the Condottieri.

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