New Gothic Literature

Gothic literature received a boost in popularity from recent adaptations of classics such as The Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor (based on the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw), and Frankenstein. Recent examples of the genre often move the action to the present day without losing the supernatural elements and decaying manors that characterized their predecessors. From the American South to the Philippines, these novels incorporate occult practices and superstitions from diverse cultures and time periods.

In LaTanya McQueen's When the Reckoning Comes, narrator Mira receives a wedding invitation from her high school friend Celine, who is white. Set on a renovated plantation, the novel alternates between Mira's flashbacks to high school and the present day, with ghosts of the enslaved watching the present action between their descendants and those of their enslavers.

In Isabel Cañas Vampires of El Norte, Nena grows up to become a curandera after being attacked by a vampire as a child. During the U.S.-Mexico war, her childhood love Néstor returns as an auxiliary cavalryman, and the two must work through past heartache and betrayal to survive the return of vampires to Mexico.

Daphne Fama's debut novel House of Monstrous Women is set amidst the political upheaval of the Philippines in the late 1980s. Joesphine receives an invitation from her childhood friend, Hiraya, to her secluded estate where Jospehine is trapped in a terrifying game of hide-and-seek. Rumors of witchcraft surround Hiraya's family and, as the game unfolds, Josephine realizes losing this game comes with sinister consequences. 

A deck of tarot cards with the ability to predict the future traps Ann Stilwell in a deadly situation in Katy Hay's The Cloisters. Stillwell’s summer job as a curatorial assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art descends into tragedy and chaos as she works with a charismatic group of occult scholars on an upcoming museum exhibition. 

In Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night, Gaspar struggles to understand his mother's horrific legacy as a cult member when he begins to show signs of inheriting his father's ability to communicate with the dead. This haunting tale of family secrets and struggles with the supernatural is set against the fraught backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970s.