Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
The setting is a maternity home, Wellwood Home, in 1970 Florida. Young women are sent there by their families to…
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Memoirs about family, memory, and inheritance
Family history used to be recorded. Memoir is where it lives now. Census sheets, baptismal dates, land deeds. Facts meant…
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What makes a great war novel?
I’ve been thinking about what makes a great war novel for years without quite phrasing it as a question. It…
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The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell: The possession novel before The Exorcist
Ray Russell published The Case Against Satan in 1962, nine years before William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist. That chronology…
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Best war memoirs
War memoir is the form I trust most. Not because it’s more accurate than fiction, O’Brien spent an entire book…
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Best books on Queer Gothics: where to start with the subgenre
I’ve always found the Gothic drawn to what’s left unsaid. It’s the thing in the locked room, the secret that…
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Best books on Ecclesiastical Gothic
The confessional is a box. The convent is a set of walls with a gate that locks from the outside….
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Haints, spirits, and Appalachian ghost belief: a reading list
The window had to be open. That was the rule in my Appalachian family when someone died: a window in…
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Best war books of all time
Any list called “best war books of all time” is a position, not a verdict. This one is mine. I…
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Folk Gothic: where the land remembers
What is Folk Gothic? Folk Gothic is rooted in place. It’s not about a single haunted house or a single…
