8 Mesmerizing Gothic Novels to Read While the Winter Winds Blow

A mysterious island, a seance, house guests with secrets to hide, a terrible storm, and murder all make for an enchanting gothic novel, and Ryan successfully pulls all of these elements together in A HOUSE OF GHOSTS. I also love that this novel is a historical fiction set during the first world war. Lord Highmount is desperate to find out what happened to his two sons who were lost in conflict, so he hosts a spiritualist event at Blackwater Abbey in hopes of making contact with them. However, everyone that arrives has a secret. And once the storm rolls in, those secrets are trapped inside with them. A HOUSE OF GHOSTS is a great locked-room mystery with touches of the supernatural and an incredible atmospheric feel.

I have always been obsessed with the phrase “All love stories are ghost stories in disguise.” So when I read it on the back of THE LOST HISTORY OF DREAMS, I knew it was a book I wanted to read, and it is that very saying that has fueled my passion for gothic novels. Robert, a former historian turned post-mortem photographer’s task is simple. He must transport his brother’s body to the chapel in Shropshire that was built as the final resting place for his wife, Ada. But Ada’s niece refuses to let him enter unless he agrees to record the real story of Hugh and Ada’s relationship. The story she tells over the course of five days forces him to confront his own life, one of love, obsession, and of course ghosts.

Setterfield’s writing is always beautiful, and that appeared in spades in BELLMAN & BLACK. When William Bellman was ten years old, he killed a bird with a catapult, and ever since then people always said he could go good or bad. But it seems that his life has turned out for the better. He has a loving and beautiful wife, a brood of happy children, and a successful business. That is, until the people around him start dying. And at each funeral, Bellman recognizes a strange man dressed in black. But when the deaths become more and more personal and William is left with only one of his children, he becomes tortured with grief. After a night of drinking he finds himself at his wife’s fresh grave, and who should be there, but the stranger with an interesting business proposition.

Secrets and big houses seem to be two helpful ingredients in a good gothic novel and mixed with the style and tone of V.C. Andrews, then you have a book you don’t want to miss out on. Emma, a young adult from the English countryside, has big dreams of becoming a Broadway star. But when she announces that she’s moving to New York, her father disowns her. Emma still moves, determined to make her dreams come true, but after a robbery and another dead-end job, she realizes that she might just have to give up. Then she meets a strange, but an intriguing young couple with a proposition: the wife cannot have a baby, and the husband wants to pay Emma to solve that problem. Excited to get some money, Emma moves into the couple’s remote estate. But when she finally realizes that she may have traded life for that money, there is no telling who she’ll be when she finally gets paid.

The Twentymans live at White Windows, an isolated house in the Yorkshire Moors, filled with secrets. Marcus is a sensitive man, but a drinker, and his sister, a cold widower. When Annaleigh, a young woman fleeing her home in London, finds herself a place as a servant at White Windows, she is grateful. But isolated, Annaleigh is drawn over and over again to Marcus and as their relationship grows, she realizes that her life is no longer her own. She must face her fears if there is any hope of escape. THE VANISHING is set during the Regency era and Tobin effortlessly encapsulates the desolate, terrifying, and sometimes beautiful idea of the moors.

When I first picked up CATHERINE HOUSE, I was intrigued but didn’t fully know what to expect. I have a deep interest in unique schools with dark secrets. Maybe it has something to do with going to an all-girls catholic school with a nun who used to try and scare us with the craziest ghost story she could. But what can I say, CATHERINE HOUSE, like any good Gothic novel, is both mysterious and alluring. The Catherine House is not like other universities or schools, but instead is an experiment in higher education that has produced some of the greatest authors, artists, scientists, and presidents. In exchange for this elite education, the students must dedicate themselves fully to Catherine House with no outside connection, no internet, no phones, not even their clothes. After tragedy strikes involving Ines’ roommate, Baby, she begins to realize that this place may be more of a gilded prison with a dangerous secret than anything else.

I finished reading MEXICAN GOTHIC months ago, and I still cannot get this book out of my head. Not only was it just a visual and visceral read, but every moment feels etched into my brain by Moreno-Garcia’s excellent hand. As the title suggests, MEXICAN GOTHIC is a true gothic novel, perfect for fans of the genre, but not for the faint of heart. After receiving a concerning letter from her cousin, Noemi travels to the countryside unsure of what she’ll find. High Place is cold, unwelcoming, and its inhabitants even more so. As Noemi digs into what caused her cousin to write that letter, she begins to unearth ungodly secrets about the former mining dynasty that she married into.

This book is compelling and will take you in odd directions you never saw coming while shadowed with Victorian ghosts. After losing both her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna is lost and adrift. She secluded herself in a small northeastern village. Suddenly she is plunged into a centuries-old mystery after finding the body of a young woman at the edge of the forest. Henna finds herself trying to discover what happened to the Franklin expedition that went missing in 1845. As she investigates, she finds herself in the eerie gothic world with a crumbling mansion with locked doors and secret passageways set against the perpetual snow. But someone is watching her, someone who doesn’t want their secrets revealed.