Here are 100 books that Detecting Women fans have personally recommended if you like
Detecting Women.
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I’ve been creating female-fronted Science Fiction stories since I was a child. My love for Star Wars motivated me to go to film school and then spend years working on the representation of women in Science Fiction movies, TV series, and video games. I’ve written about characters like Leia Organa and Hera Syndulla in Star Wars,Dana Scully in The X-Files,Sarah Connor in The Terminator, and Elisabeth Shaw in Prometheus. I have recently started sharing some of my research on Medium. Some of the books on this list have supported my research for over 15 years while I discovered others during my doctoral studies.
This book has been central to my research on women in Science Fiction although I am not a Horror fan.
Given how often women are thrown through gendered-based violence in different genres, Clover’s study brings many useful points for not only Horror itself, but also thrillers, action films, and Fantasy.
It investigates different facets of women’s representation and their fight against sexualized trials. My favorite chapters are those on the body in the slasher film, the discussion on women’s stories versus men’s stories, and the revenge narrative.
From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented--notably the slasher movie's "final girls"--as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been creating female-fronted Science Fiction stories since I was a child. My love for Star Wars motivated me to go to film school and then spend years working on the representation of women in Science Fiction movies, TV series, and video games. I’ve written about characters like Leia Organa and Hera Syndulla in Star Wars,Dana Scully in The X-Files,Sarah Connor in The Terminator, and Elisabeth Shaw in Prometheus. I have recently started sharing some of my research on Medium. Some of the books on this list have supported my research for over 15 years while I discovered others during my doctoral studies.
LaSalle’s book made me fall in love with Pre-Code Hollywood despite having been in film and media studies for 20 years.
His in-depth study of many famous actresses during this era such as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Jean Harlow, shows how freer women could be on screen for their life choices.
The later chapters address the lasting impact of the Code era on the representation of women and their agency, even on contemporary movies. As he discusses it, the Code caused the decline of “socially responsive women’s pictures.”
Between 1929 and 1934, women in American cinema took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality and led unapologetic careers. Before then, women on screen had come in two varieties - sweet ingenue or vamp. Then two stars came along and blasted away those stereotypes. Greta Garbo turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale. Meanwhile, Norma Shearer succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. These complicated women paved the way for a deluge of…
I’ve been creating female-fronted Science Fiction stories since I was a child. My love for Star Wars motivated me to go to film school and then spend years working on the representation of women in Science Fiction movies, TV series, and video games. I’ve written about characters like Leia Organa and Hera Syndulla in Star Wars,Dana Scully in The X-Files,Sarah Connor in The Terminator, and Elisabeth Shaw in Prometheus. I have recently started sharing some of my research on Medium. Some of the books on this list have supported my research for over 15 years while I discovered others during my doctoral studies.
To say I had high expectations of this book would be an understatement and it certainly delivered!
Although quite niche, this book gives us a detailed look into professional women and women scientists, among other roles, in 1950s Science Fiction B movies.
Although we often believe that more recent films are more progressive, Noonan shows how even gender limitations in the 1950s still provided room for qualified women to shine in different scientific fields, both in traditional and pioneering roles. She also studies how women could have important roles at the periphery of science like computer operators or darkroom technicians.
This book proposes that the social ideology of the 1950s, which was partly concerned with gender issues, saturated the ""B"" science fiction films of that era and inspired a new appreciation for the role of women in scientific advancements and other social achievements. Drawing on feminist literary and cultural theory, the author offers detailed, historically situated readings of 10 films and compares cinematic representations with real female professionals of the time.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
I’ve been creating female-fronted Science Fiction stories since I was a child. My love for Star Wars motivated me to go to film school and then spend years working on the representation of women in Science Fiction movies, TV series, and video games. I’ve written about characters like Leia Organa and Hera Syndulla in Star Wars,Dana Scully in The X-Files,Sarah Connor in The Terminator, and Elisabeth Shaw in Prometheus. I have recently started sharing some of my research on Medium. Some of the books on this list have supported my research for over 15 years while I discovered others during my doctoral studies.
This is the most comprehensive and thought-provoking book on women in Blaxploitation that I have read.
Sims provides a clear and structure analysis of how Blaxploitation came to be, how it tied into Black femininity and influenced the film industry.
Sims analysis specific actresses who fronted Blaxploitation cinema such as Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson. She describes how American film needs more multifaceted African American characters following the decline of Blaxploitation and how the genre influenced mainstream action heroines like masculinized ones and mother warriors.
With the Civil Rights movement of the sixties fresh in their perspective, movie producers of the early 1970s began to make films aimed toward the underserved African American audience. Over the next five years or so, a number of cheaply made, so-called blaxploitation movies featured African American actresses in roles which broke traditional molds. Typically long on flash and violence but lacking in character depth and development, this genre nonetheless did a great deal toward redefining the perception of African American actresses, breaking traditional African American female stereotypes and laying the groundwork for later feminine action heroines. This critical study…
I'm a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television with a particular passion for the horror genre – the first film books I ever read were about Horror. I'm also a confirmed Italophile. I became fascinated by Mario Bava – and later, Italian horror more broadly – before I saw his films from accounts and images of them in books and magazines. The films weren’t easy to see before video, DVD/blu-ray or streaming, and so I was on a mission over time to track them all down. This is how cult reputations often develop – from obscurity to re-evaluation – and that was one of the things I wanted to address in my book.
Curti is an Italian film critic who also writes in English and brings a singular expertise to Italian genre cinema.
The giallo, the Italian murder mystery, isn’t technically Horror but often incorporates it in gory murder scenes. A lot has been written about the genre, but there has never been a more thorough account than this one, as close to definitive as one might get, and it will certainly broaden your understanding of the giallo as well as introducing you to films and TV shows you might not have heard of before.
Since the release in 1929 of a popular book series with bright yellow covers, the Italian word giallo (yellow) has come to define a whole spectrum of mystery and detective fiction and films. Although most English speakers associate the term giallo with the violent and erotic thrillers popular in the 1960s and 1970s from directors like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and others, the term encompasses a wide range of Italian media such as mysteries, thrillers and detective stories-even comedies and political pamphlets. As films like Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Deep Red (1975) have received international acclaim,…
I grew up a child of the movies, open to watching anything at least once and countlessly rewatching the movies I loved. When not in front of a television, I was instead in front of a book, playing the words of the page out in my imagination. Now I write thrillers of multiple varieties (action, techno, paranormal, etc.), still visualizing words as movies playing out in my mind. Over the years, I’ve seen the quality of novel adaptations grow (e.g., Harry Potter, The Martian, etc.), and yet these staples of my youth have always stuck with me as lost opportunities to deliver a superior work to the general movie-watching audience.
On one hand, this sequel to the amazing The Silence of the Lambs might have been doomed from the start, given the pedigree it was expected to live up to. On the other hand, taken as its own work, Hannibal is an interesting, disturbing, and highly engrossing horror thriller.
The ending was extremely controversial, so much so that it was changed for the 2001 movie adaptation. Regardless of how one feels about each ending, however, one thing is certain: the book was the superior version of the tale.
Ridley Scott is an amazing director, but he was the wrong choice for this story, and it led to the overall feel of the movie, as well as the altered ending, not living up to the feel of other entries in the series. Keep an open mind, and the book will please.
_________________________ HANNIBAL LECTER HAS BEEN ON THE RUN FOR SEVEN YEARS.
And seven years after he helped FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling bring down Buffalo Bill, her career is collapsing after a disastrous drug bust.
Meanwhile, seven years after violently escaping from custody, Hannibal Lecter is hunted by Mason Verger, a psychopathic former client obsessed with feeding him to wild boars.
With the one-time partners at a low ebb, Hannibal is the one to reach out to Clarice, who has been plagued by dreams of his rasping voice.
It has been seven years since they both came to realise they…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
When we speak in real life, much of what we say out loud doesn't have any real meaning. But when authors write, each word a character says must convey meaning to drive the scene forward. The words must exhibit some form of information—emotion, advancement of an idea, or even be the action itself—otherwise, they're just wasted words on the page. The true challenge of writing dialogue is to convey as much as possible with as few words as possible. I love a book in which I'm yearning for specific characters to return just so I can hear the carefully crafted, intelligent, and tight words they employ when speaking, especially when two characters are verbally dueling.
The book is centered around an FBI trainee (Clarice) sent to interview an imprisoned, sophisticated, cannibalistic psychiatrist (Hannibal Lecter) to help her catch an active serial killer.
Their meetings are brilliant and tense exchanges within a psychological game in which Lecter will only offer clues if Clarice reveals deeply personal details about herself. The tone of these conversations, using dialogue to navigate an intellectual and emotional battlefield, was brilliantly crafted.
"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." In lesser hands, this single spoken sentence might have been replaced with several paragraphs of exposition to describe Hannibal Lecter.
As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknames "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.
That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.
My favorite books as a child were the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine. This began my love of all things horror (including cheesy, campy B-horror). The movies that people love to hate (and also the books that stir up the same emotions) combine humanity's most basic instincts: fear, lust, and humor. Bringing these three together in perfect union creates a combination I can't get enough of. It's what drives my own writing and my insatiable desire to seek out more stories like this.
This list wouldn't be complete without mentioning Laymon. The 'correct' Laymon recommendation for this list would be every book he has ever written, but alas, there can only be one. This book is full of violence, but it's more than just a slasher. The several flashbacks bring the story back to when the protagonists were in college together and highlight their antics and show how strong their bond is. Blood Games has it all: a group of friends making bad decisions, isolation from the outside world, and a bloodthirsty killer. Turns out, the Totem Pole Lodge's gruesome past bleeds into the present...
They meet for one week every year, five young women, best friends since college, in search of fun and thrills. Each year they choose a different place for their reunion. This year it's Helen's choice, and she chose the Totem Pole Lodge. Bad choice.
The Totem Pole Lodge is a deserted resort hotel deep in the woods with a gory, shocking past. Helen has a macabre streak and she can't wait to tell her friends all about what happened at the lodge and why it's now abandoned. But Helen and the others are in for a nasty surprise. The resort…
My favorite books as a child were the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine. This began my love of all things horror (including cheesy, campy B-horror). The movies that people love to hate (and also the books that stir up the same emotions) combine humanity's most basic instincts: fear, lust, and humor. Bringing these three together in perfect union creates a combination I can't get enough of. It's what drives my own writing and my insatiable desire to seek out more stories like this.
Fans of Bentley Little won't be surprised to find out this book begins with a family moving from southern California to a small town in Arizona, but, in typical Little fashion, this is more than a small-town horror story. Throw in the author's eccentricities and his proclivity for absolutely insane stories and add a dash of heretical, Eastern Orthodox Christians called Molokans (see, horror novels are also educational), and you have the makings of a fantastic B-horror movie sans jump scares and sound effects. Like many authors on this list, it was hard to narrow Little's novels down to just one, but this was one of my first introductions to Little, and that's why it made the list.
Bram Stoker Award-winning horror author Bentley Little proves why you should never go home again in this terrifying novel.
Welcome to McGuane, Arizona. Population: 200...199...198...197...
Gregory Tomasov has returned with his family to the quaint Arizona community of his youth. In McGuane, the air is clean, the land is unspoiled. Nothing much has changed. Except now, no one goes out after dark. And no one told Gregory that he shouldn’t have moved into the old abandoned farm on the edge of town. Once upon a time something bad happened there. Something that’s now buried in its walls. Something now reborn…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
My favorite books as a child were the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine. This began my love of all things horror (including cheesy, campy B-horror). The movies that people love to hate (and also the books that stir up the same emotions) combine humanity's most basic instincts: fear, lust, and humor. Bringing these three together in perfect union creates a combination I can't get enough of. It's what drives my own writing and my insatiable desire to seek out more stories like this.
Most Masterton recommendations start with The Manitou, which is a good choice, but to really get that 'B-horror in book form' rush, Prey is where to turn. What happens when you throw a recently divorced man and his young son into a haunted house in a quaint, seaside village? Did you guess inter-dimensional monsters? Don't turn out the lights, and don't go into the attic when reading this one.
There's something in the attic of Fortyfoot House.
Something that rustles. Something that scampers and scratches. Something with fur, far more terrifying than a rat.
Recently divorced, David Williams takes a job restoring Fortyfoot House, a dilapidated 19th-century orphanage, hoping to find peace of mind and get to know his young son. But then he hears the scratching noises in the attic. And he sees long-dead people walking across the lawn.
Does Fortyfoot House exist in today, yesterday, or tomorrow – or all three at once? Only one thing is certain – it is a house with a dark secret…
