TBR List for Women In Horror Month
When Cat, one of our lovely editors, asked me to compile a TBR (To Be Read list - what I plan to read) for Women in Horror Month, I was ecstatic. The only challenge I faced was narrowing it down to just five books (because we all know I’ve been girl-bossing a little too close to the sun with my past TBRs). I’m so excited to read the titles below and let you all know what I thought of them. Without further ado, here are my picks for March:
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (2021)
This novel is the March pick for the (wonderful) Hear Us Scream book club! I strongly recommend that you join our Discord to read along with us and participate in our end-of-the-month discussion. I have yet to be let down by our amazing HUS community. The previous picks were incredible reads, and that track record, on top of this novel’s critical reception, sent my expectations through the roof. The synopsis keeps things pretty vague: a house, a serial killer, a stolen child, and a secret. It has all the elements to become a highlight of the year: fingers crossed that this will live up to the hype.
More Deadly than the Male: Masterpieces from the Queens of Horror, Organizers: Graeme Davis (2019)
I’m keeping my promise to make 2022 the year of anthologies and collections, and so far they’ve all been wonderful. This anthology presents the reader with tales from iconic writers, such as Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), who surprised me as I had no idea she'd penned one of the first mummy tales. The book features countless other women ,a lot of whom have been forgotten and/or whose horror work is known only by a select few (such as Louisa May Alcott and Edith Wharton). I can’t wait to dive into their chilling gothic stories, to discover the works of great writers who didn’t get the praise and recognition they deserved during their time simply because they were women.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin (2022)
This is another book that I’ve seen quite a lot of hype for and that I’ve been meaning to pick up, especially because I’ve been in a post-apocalyptic reading mood as of late (this can be blamed on the Netflix show All of Us are Dead, which I also recommend). Felker-Martin’s novel “follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival,” and they have to hunt men and harvest their…dangly organs to make sure they won’t meet the same fate. I already know that this book will make me squirm, but that’s a small price to pay for a story that centers on trans and non-binary people as the heroes and survivors instead of depicting them as the “monsters” and “freaks.” Plus, it affirms the notion of “found family” in an apocalyptic scenario actually it’s even better because it’s QUEER FOUND FAMILY, one of the tropes that warm my heart the most.
Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre by Alison Peirse (2020) - This is a book I’ve wanted to read for a while, I’ve been getting more and more into non-fiction since graduating college and horror is my favorite subject. Even though we’re in the year 2022, AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth) and femme presenting individuals are still overlooked, ignored, and, more often than not, have their voices ignored in the horror community (well, everywhere really). This book’s goal is to correct the misconception that women are not interested or involved in horror, focusing on horror cinema, through the exploration of different kinds of cinema and case studies. What’s got me the most excited is that the case studies cover Latin American, East Asian, and Australian filmmakers as well as North American and European ones. In my opinion, Argentina and Chile produce the most incredible horror films but are often overlooked by English-speaking audiences, which is an incredible shame and a huge loss for them.
Dolly: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill (2021)
I don’t even remember how I came across this novel; that’s how long this book has been on my TBR (as someone who always piles up way too many titles for her own good). Beyond the Creek has reignited my love of Gothic novels, with their mysterious matriarchs, evil caretakers, creepy houses, and even creepier children. Hill’s novel is set in the English Fens and focuses on two cousins who are spending the summer with their spinster aunt and “her cruel housekeeper.” A situation that already wasn’t great becomes darker and much more terrifying when the little girl Lenora doesn’t receive the doll she wanted for her birthday. The synopsis gives me The Turning of the Screw (1898) vibes, and I’m intrigued to see how the story will unfold.
