Here are 4 books that Mave Michael fans have personally recommended once you finish the Mave Michael series.
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I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
When I first read the back of this book I thought, "How frightening can wooden, life-sized figures tucked away in a remote mansion be?" Answer: A lot.
When the book opens, Elsie Bainbridge’s husband has died (mysteriously). When she discovers the strange totems the servants are terrified of locked away in the attic, something is definitely…not right. Once the figures’ eyes appear to move and Elsie finds them in different places in the house as if they move of their own accord, her piece of mine starts to unravel. And so did mine.
"[An] extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book." -Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Laura Purcell's THE SHAPE OF DARKNESS is now out from Penguin!
Some doors are locked for a reason.
When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But pregnant and widowed just weeks after their wedding, with her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her late husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden…
As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.
I love this book because it proves fear does not have to shout to own the room.
Shirley Jackson makes dread feel elegant, patient, and almost polite, which somehow makes it worse. I admire how much she trusts atmosphere, silence, suggestion, and character discomfort.
That is the kind of horror I respect most: not just “what is happening?” but “why does everything suddenly feel wrong?”
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and…
Growing up very pale in a sun-washed Australian coastal town, I often found myself retreating to the cool shadows. It was in the darkness that I felt most at home—which may be why I’ve always been drawn to stories with a darker edge. My fascination with creatures in those frightening tales—immortal, dark, and possessed of terrible appetites—led to Winter’s Shadow, my debut YA novel, and the reason I still write today. I love books that blur the line between horror and the mundane—tales that feel like nightmares recalled in the comforting light of day. These are the stories that linger, and this list is a love letter to them.
When I first read Interview with the Vampire (I was 12), I was struck by how Anne Rice made darkness beautiful. The mood, the grief, the sensuality—it all felt so rich and strange and alive.
I didn’t just want to read about Louis and Lestat; I wanted to live inside that shadowed world, however painful. The power of her vampires was alluring, even as their sadness confused me. How could being immortal be such a torment?
This book taught me that supernatural fiction could be poetic, philosophical, even transcendent. There’s a reason this novel endures.
It made me want to write stories where beauty and horror dance together in candlelight.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Anne Rice, this sensuously written spellbinding classic remains 'the most successful vampire story since Bram Stoker's Dracula' (The Times)
In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood.
When Interview with the Vampire was published the Washington Post said it was a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination . . . sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'. Now, more than forty years since its release, Anne…
An avid reader, I began a project in 2012 to read one short story a week in supernatural mysteries, ghost stories, and quiet horror genres. I began with the classic authors: Poe, MR James, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker, du Maurier, etc. I began a blog, Reading Fiction Blog, and posted these free stories with my reviews (I’m still posting today). Over the years, it turned into a compendium of fiction. Today, I have nearly 400 short stories by over 150 classic and now contemporary authors in the blog Index. I did this because I wanted to learn more about writing dark fiction and who better to learn from than the masters?
I adore reading atmospheric adventures of mystery, supernatural, and ghostly powers; this book has these values in abundance. Noemi’s alluring character is smart, savvy, and admirably vulnerable. Loved her. At High House in the Mexican countryside, Noemi discovers ghostly entities repeatedly forming blisters across the walls. How mysterious and threatening; I was fascinated.
The best part of the novel for me was the emotional intelligence of the characters because their behavior is both suspiciously rational and heart-stopping clever. Gripping as all heck. This family was obsessed with a relentless desire to rule and control their destiny at all costs via Otherworld powers. Absolutely compelling. I was breathless along with Noemi at every step as she was drawn into the dangers and treacherous family secrets that threatened to kill her.
The award-winning author of Gods of Jade and Shadow (one of the 100 best fantasy novels of all time, TIME magazine) returns with a mesmerising feminist Gothic fantasy, in which a glamorous young socialite discovers the haunting secrets of a beautiful old mansion in 1950s Mexico.
He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemi. You have to save me.
When glamorous socialite Noemi Taboada receives a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging to be rescued from a mysterious doom, it's clear something is desperately amiss. Catalina has always had a flair for the dramatic, but…
