Recent Gothic Books to Read This Fall

We are in prime gothic-book-reading time, which is perfect, because the recent offerings for BIPOC gothic fiction are plentiful this year, including a lot of this list of the best new spooky Latine books to read for Latine Heritage Month that I gathered a couple weeks ago. So much of gothic fiction deals with the intimate and domestic, and hovers over what the ideals of each should be in Western society. People with the experience of living in the margins are often the best-suited to explore that gap between the ideal and reality—and what horrors are brought about in the pursuit of that perfection. It’s because of this, I think, that some of the most viscerally memorable gothic fiction I’ve read has been written by BIPOC writers. Who better to dissect the unattainable dream of ideal domesticity and expose its true cost than the people who pay it? Below are sword-wielding women in 1800s Japan, Aztec gods, and even a new, updated sort of look at the haunted house. No matter what, though, there is that all-encompassing and inescapable sense of dread that develops, as what should be a source of comfort becomes corrupt. Mazywood by Tananarive DueIn this latest from the Queen of Black ho...