The Best Gothic Horror Novels of 2024-2025
Gothic Horror Literature has enthralled us since the 17th century.
For those of you who didn’t get a literary degree, you are probably well-employed doing something useful instead of screaming into the void of the internet all day. So let me give you the textbook answer:
Gothic Horror Literature (or, simply, Gothic Literature) is a genre of literature that features the following elements:
Rot & decay (think crumbling castles, windswept moors, and haunted mansions)
Elements of the supernatural (or threat of the supernatural)
Isolation
An unnatural overlay of past and present
Women (Sometimes distressed damsels, sometimes monsters,)
And often, but not necessarily, the ever-present threat of “madness” as well as asylums
This is hardly a comprehensive list, but there is a lot of literature, academics, and wikipedia pages that do a better job of explaining than I ever could, so I’ll keep it brief. Suffice it to say, Gothic Horror Literature is not new and it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
We have been blessed with a glut of amazing Gothic Horror Literature in 2024-2025, and here is a list of just a few that I have enjoyed.
Lost in the Garden – Adam S. Leslie, 2024
This one is indescribable. A small town in the English countryside is beset by a sickness in reality. Lost in the Garden has the main elements of Gothic Lit in place – rot and decay (the dead come back to the world of the living, but not in the way you think.) This also covers supernatural, and past/present overlay, etc. Oh and for sure women, most of the characters are women, this one definitely passes the Bechdel test.
This book is a liminal space summer nightmare, an adult Alice in Wonderland style trip into an endless afternoon of horror with its roots in a hostile, ancient deity. It’s set in the 90s, so no flowing gowns or castles, but the lack does not make this any less capable of the creeping dread Gothic Horror is known for.
The Bog Wife – Kay Chronister, 2024
Yearning for a Gothic Horror lit set in America? The Bog Wife follows a reclusive, cult-like family through the destruction of their bloodline and ancestral home in modern-day Virginia.
Bogs and bog bodies are really hot right now, Johanna Van Veen discusses bog bodies in both of her great Gothic Horror novels. I see why, they’re creepy.
Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) – Nathan Ballingrud, 2024
Love me some Nathan Ballingrud. I loved Wounds, and I loved this Gothic Horror novella.
Set in an alternative timeline of a space-bound Victorian-era, the plot is one familiar to the genre: a woman suffers from “chronic melancholy” and is sent to a “healing asylum” to rest (read — her husband thinks shes a bummer and dumps her in a prison to die)
The only difference is that this rotting asylum is on the dark side of the moon, which is covered in dense forest. Here the sadist doctors use the inter-brain connectivity of moon spider silk to cure its patients, the way lobotomizing people cured them.
All elements of Gothic Literature are touched in this series, and it is in the name… Lunar Gothic sounds like a nail polish color I would never get tired of wearing, and I can’t wait to read the next novella coming out this October 2025.
Victorian Psycho – Virginia Feito, 2025
If you read one novel this year, it should be Victorian Psycho.
Vicious, satisfying, darkly hilarious — I don’t have all the words needed to describe this novel from Virginia Feito. All the elements of Gothic Horror are there, but there is also the strange, hysterical, and sometimes awful humor that runs throughout. This is a novel for every woman who has seen an utterly stupid domestic tableau and just wanted to stab everyone there. That may not technically be Gothic Horror Lit. But I don’t care, I make the rules of the list, and this book slaps.
Everyone should buy a copy of Victorian Psycho – it also takes place over Christmas, making it an excellent horror novel for the holidays.
Blood on her Tongue – Johanna Van Veen 2025
Blood on her Tongue is the second gothic horror from Joanna Van Veen, the first being My Darling, Dreadful Thing. Both novels fit neatly into the genre, but are otherwise completely unique. I have never read another Gothic Horror novel like Blood on her Tongue.
Do you like gore, rot, and grossness in your Gothic Horror? What about being buried alive, or parasites? Do you enjoy saphoric revenge stories that make you kind of want to throw up? Can you not get enough of BOG BODIES?
Then Blood on her Tongue is for you. I couldn’t put it down, and I am looking forward to reading what the author writes next.
The Starving Saints – Caitlin Starling 2025
I haven’t quite finished this one, but so far I love it. A medieval body horror with saphoric undertones, religious horror, and definite voice. I thoroughly enjoyed The Death of Jane Lawrence, her previous Gothic Horror novel that blew my mind with its complexity and beautiful prose.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and if you like my blog please share with friends or consider purchasing a copy of my book, Child of Dark Water.
