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Plain Bad Heroines

Emily M. Danforth · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Lair of Dreams

Libba Bray · 592 pages

The longing of dreams draws the dead, and this city holds many dreams. After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. With her uncanny ability to read people's secrets, she's become a media darling, and earned the title "America's Sweetheart Seer." Everyone's in love with the city's newest It Girl...everyone except the other Diviners. Piano-p

Omniscient NarratorEerieSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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The Bewitching

Silvia Moreno-Garcia · 360 pages

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In t

Gothic FictionCursesEerieHorror
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab · 448 pages

Dual TimelineCursesOmniscient NarratorAtmospheric
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Carmilla

J. Sheridan Le Fanu · 86 pages

First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), *Carmilla* is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality

Gothic FictionEerieHorrorAtmospheric
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Gothic FictionDual TimelineCursesAtmospheric
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Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir · 448 pages

Omniscient NarratorGothic FictionLGBTQ+ ProtagonistEerie
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The Angel's Game

Carlos Ruiz Zafon · 537 pages

From master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind, comes The Angel's Game--a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love."The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that, when I opened those windows, its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets I could capture on p

Gothic FictionCursesEerieAtmospheric
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The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 224 pages

**The Picture of Dorian Gray** is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical *Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine*. The novel-length version was published in April 1891. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray))

Omniscient NarratorGothic FictionEerieAtmospheric
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Lasher

Anne Rice · 578 pages

The Talamasca, documenters of paranormal activity, is on the hunt for the newly born Lasher. Mayfair women are dying from hemorrhages and a strange genetic anomaly has been found in Rowan and Michael. Lasher, born from Rowan, is another species altogether and now in the corporeal body, represents an incalcuable threat to the Mayfairs. Rowan and Lasher travel together to Houston and she becomes pre

Gothic FictionCursesEerieHorror
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Rawblood

Catriona Ward

She comes in the night. She looks into your eyes. One by one, she has taken us all. For generations they have died young. Now Iris and her father are the last of the Villarca line. Their disease confines them to a lonely mansion on Dartmoor; their disease means they must die alone. But Iris breaks her promise to hide from the world. She dares to fall in love. And only then do they understand the t

Gothic FictionCursesEerieHorror
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The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield · 424 pages

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.

Gothic FictionDual TimelineEerieAtmospheric
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Gothikana

Runyx

An unusual girl. An enigmatic man. An ancient castle. What could go wrong? An outcast her entire life, Corvina Clemm is left adrift after losing her mother. When she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts it as a sign from the universe. The last thing she expects though is an old, secluded castle on top of a mountain riddled with secrets, deceit,

Boarding SchoolGothic FictionEerieAtmospheric
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The Silent Companions

Laura Purcell · 304 pages

**When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .** When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants rese

Gothic FictionDual TimelineEerieHorror
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The Invited

Jennifer McMahon · 399 pages

Gothic FictionDual TimelineHorrorEerie
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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

V E Schwab · 544 pages

This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets. This is a story about love. 1827. London

LGBTQ+ ProtagonistGothic FictionAtmosphericHorror
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The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 299 pages

Omniscient NarratorCursesGothic FictionAtmospheric
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The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova · 690 pages

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconcei

Gothic FictionDual TimelineEerieHorror
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Starling House

Alix E. Harrow · 347 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK “This book has everything you could possibly want this fall...a cursed town, a haunted house, a vivid & eerie setting—plus, characters willing to risk everything.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club October ’23 Pick) Starling House is a gorgeous, modern gothic fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of Jan

Gothic FictionCursesEerieAtmospheric
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Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys · 189 pages

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold-hearted and prideful R

Gothic FictionCursesEerieAtmospheric
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Your Blood, My Bones

Kelly Andrew · 368 pages

CursesGothic FictionHorrorEerie
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Beautiful Creatures

Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl · 563 pages

In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.

CursesEerieAtmosphericDual Timeline
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The Book of Speculation

Erika Swyler · 376 pages

"Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home--a house, perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards, and seldom calls. On a day in

Dual TimelineCursesAtmosphericEerie
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke · 935 pages

Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and

Omniscient NarratorCursesAtmosphericGothic Fiction
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Ordinary Monsters

J.M. Miro · 672 pages

Gothic FictionEerieBoarding SchoolAtmospheric

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