Gothic novels

FullblownRose

Hello,
Looking for new reading material! Gothic in style, pref. contemporary as I've devoured most of the classics! Doesn't have to be weighty literature at all


Also I'm hapy to read fiction aimed at teenagers too..Marcus Sedgewick is a favourite..

Queen-Mise

When you say gothic - what actually do you mean? Dracula, Jekyl & Hyde, Frankenstein type stuff.

Here is a link from Goodreads for modern gothic - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056602222&page=24

I am reading a lot of stuff that is classed as modern gothic but none of what I am reading is particularly literary (have enough of that since college). It is hard finding good authors - as some of the stuff is utter drivel and you get a lot of romance.

Here are some authors that I like from different areas - I'll give a brief description of their stuff.

Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse books (TV Series True Blood based on them - contemporary vampire/werewolf/supernatural)

Anne Bishop - Black Jewels Trilogy - fantasy with some of the elements of urban fantasy thrown in - Excellent books.

Illona Andrews - a husband/wife writing team. Post apocalyptic urban fantasy with female heroine. Very readable.

Rachel Caine - these books are aimed at teenagers - Morganville Vampires. They are ok. She also wrote the Weather Warden series - based more at adults. I read the first 3/4 but they get incredible tiresome. I gave up on them.

Philip Pullman - you have probably read these, again aimed at teenagers - but they are fantastic. Amber Spyglass etc.

Christopher Paolini - these are aimed at teenagers (he was 16 when wrote the first book, Elder/est), excellent quality fantasy.


If any of these authors appeal to you - I can give more suggestions for books. Or clarify more what kind of modern gothic you want to read - they are probably about 50 sub-genres of it on goodreads at the moment.

Jennifer Estep - Elemental Assassin series is good. Just finished reading the last short story yesterday. Entertaining.

FullblownRose

Queen-Mise wrote: »

When you say gothic - what actually do you mean? Dracula, Jekyl & Hyde, Frankenstein type stuff.

Here is a link from Goodreads for modern gothic - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056602222&page=24

I am reading a lot of stuff that is classed as modern gothic but none of what I am reading is particularly literary (have enough of that since college). It is hard finding good authors - as some of the stuff is utter drivel and you get a lot of romance.

Here are some authors that I like from different areas - I'll give a brief description of their stuff.

Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse books (TV Series True Blood based on them - contemporary vampire/werewolf/supernatural)

Anne Bishop - Black Jewels Trilogy - fantasy with some of the elements of urban fantasy thrown in - Excellent books.

Illona Andrews - a husband/wife writing team. Post apocalyptic urban fantasy with female heroine. Very readable.

Rachel Caine - these books are aimed at teenagers - Morganville Vampires. They are ok. She also wrote the Weather Warden series - based more at adults. I read the first 3/4 but they get incredible tiresome. I gave up on them.

Philip Pullman - you have probably read these, again aimed at teenagers - but they are fantastic. Amber Spyglass etc.

Christopher Paolini - these are aimed at teenagers (he was 16 when wrote the first book, Elder/est), excellent quality fantasy.


If any of these authors appeal to you - I can give more suggestions for books. Or clarify more what kind of modern gothic you want to read - they are probably about 50 sub-genres of it on goodreads at the moment.

Jennifer Estep - Elemental Assassin series is good. Just finished reading the last short story yesterday. Entertaining.

Thanks a million!

Good question, well basically the books you've mentioned all sound like something I'd read. If it has a bit of mystery and adventure and the supernatural or a spooky atmosphere it loosly fits into what I'd call Gothic.

I'm the same, I have had enough of classics and literary stuff. I read Dorian Gray, The woman in white, the moonstone and many others before I was 11 or 12 and somehow I put myself off the classics completely!

I've read all the Sookie Stackhouse books, very easy to get into and enjoyable, and I'm going to look for the others you've mentioned now. We seem to be reading the same kind of books. Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire hunter series and Kelley Armstrong's Women of the otherworld series have kept me busy up to now, they are worth a look too. I found two interesting books on Goodreads yesterday called Anno Dracula and Rivers of London.

Paddy Samurai

FullblownRose wrote: »

Thanks a million!

If it has a bit of mystery and adventure and the supernatural or a spooky atmosphere it loosly fits into what I'd call Gothic.

All these are modern books, and one of them might interest you...........

Ushers Passing by Robert McCammon
In this most gothic of Robert McCammon's novels, setting is key: the continuing saga of the Usher family (descended from the brother of Roderick and Madeline of Edgar Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher") takes place in the weird and picturesque heart of the North Carolina mountains. The haughty, aristocratic Ushers live in a mansion near Asheville; the poor but crafty mountain folk (whose families are just as ancient) live on Briartop Mountain nearby. At harvest time, when the book's action unfolds, the mountains are a blaze of color. Add to the mixture a sinister history of mountain kids disappearing every year, a journalist investigating those disappearances, a monster called "The Pumpkin Man," moldy books and paintings in a huge old library at the Usher estate, and a secret chamber with a strange device involving a brass pendulum and tuning forks--and you've got a splendid recipe for atmospheric horror.

Creepers by David Morrell
It's difficult to pin any particular label on Creepers. At heart a thriller, it also can be categorized as a gothic, horror, or even a time travel novel. It's not cliché to say that Morrell gives readers one hell of a ride, as it's a perfect description of the feeling this book gives you--exciting, captivating and suspenseful, you'll no doubt find yourself thinking Creepers would easily lend itself to a variety of adaptations, whether it be as an action film, a video game, or virtual reality park attraction. Suffice it to say that the man who has alternately been dubbed the "father of all modern action novels" and "the mild mannered professor with the bloody minded visions" has once again proven his considerable mettle, delivering yet another book sure to satisfy loyal fans and win him some new ones as well.

The Stress of her Regard by Tim Powers
Set early in the 19th century, Powers's ( On Stranger Tides ) seventh novel is a horror story that wonderfully evokes the period. On the stormy night before his wedding, Dr. Michael Crawford, in an ill-advised moment while drinking and carousing with two of his friends, slips his intended's ring on the finger of a statue of a woman in the inn's courtyard. The next morning the statue has disappeared. Disturbed, Crawford purchases a new ring and goes to his wedding. The night's celebrations are followed by a morning infinitely more horrifying than the previous one--Crawford awakens to find his bride murdered. Doubting his own sanity, he flees England, becoming aware that he is pursued by a lamia --a malignant female spirit. He seeks help from his friends, the poets Byron and Shelley, who, it turns out, have experience with such a monster. Strewn with literary personages and allusions, the book is entertaining on several levels, but most particularly as a chilling horror-adventure.

FullblownRose

Oooh, excellent, thank you very much! I will certainly look for them.

Queen-Mise

OK Rose - now I see where you are going.... A lot of what I am reading is classed as urban fantasy. It is a peculiar genre to navigate as you get stuff like Paranormal Romance (Charlaine Harris is in here as well as being classed as horror) - but some of the romance stuff is basically Mills & Boon, absolutely awful stuff.

Here are the authors I like - Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton, Anne Bishop, Illona Andrews, Jeanine Frost's Night Huntress Series, Jennifer Estep, Cassandra Clare (read the first of these a few days ago - a nice world she has created, has lots of potential), Patricia Briggs (I liked these), Kim Harrison (I like these also - post-apocalyptic with the funniest cause ever for it).

Here are the ones to stay away from - Lynsay Sands' Argeneau books (they are awful), I have stumbled across more of the awful stuff, can't think of the names of them now.
I read the ChicagoLand Vampire Series - I'd avoid them, she killed of one character after spending 5 books building them, it was stupid. So won't be reading any more of them.
I also don't like them Weather Warden series - it is getting very tiresome.


Jim Butcher writes Urban Fantasy - but haven't gotten around to reading them yet, always comes up pretty high on recommended authors. But then the Anita Blake books get slated & I like them.

Look at this page on Goodreads for subsets of Urban Fantasy - http://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/urban-fantasy

Finally would really suggest reading Anne Bishops first trilogy - it is more fantasy with female heroine, they are excellent.

EDIT: on one of the Argeneau books - it starts with a kidnapping & kinda rape of a good looking man (which obviously is morally OK) - but through talking & various adventures he & girl gets together and live happily ever after :0) They all seem to be like that... Bizarre.

Corkfeen

How about Anne Rice, would be fairly well written as modern Gothic stories go...

wilkie2006

Check out:

Melmoth the Wander by Charles Robert Maturin

Written by an eccentric Anglican curate, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new fever pitch of intensity. Its tormented villain seeks a victim to release from his fatal pact with the devil, and Maturin's bizarre narrative structure whirls the reader from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island, from a London madhouse to the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition.

The Monk by Mathew Lewis

Ambrosio, the worthy superior of the Capuchins of Madrid, falls to the temptations of Matilda, a fiend-inspired wanton who, disguised as a boy, has entered his monastery as a novice.

Malari

I've just finished A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick and it's a good gothic thriller. Character traits and motices revealed slowly throughout and it has a very sinister tone.

FullblownRose

Thanks very much to everyone..plenty of ideas there!

Quatermain

If you want a good, solid door-stopper of a gothic fantasy: Ghormenghast, by Mervin Peake.

Not sure I would recommend Paolini, though. His first book takes the plot straight from the first Star Wars movie, and the others are essentially his Mary-Sue author avatar doing whatever he likes without consequence.

FullblownRose

Thanks! My amazon shopping trolley is groaning!