These 24 novels showcase the popularity, diversity, and vibrancy of today's Gothic historical fiction

Gothic historical fiction has exploded in popularity, a trend I couldn’t be happier about. I’ve been reading gothic novels since grade school, with favorites including Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Katheryn Kimbrough, and Barbara Michaels. In the standard plotline, a sheltered young woman arrives at a mansion in a remote corner of England, often to work as a governess, and finds herself engulfed in secrets and danger, ones revolving around the forbiddingly handsome master of the house. 

In the 1970s and '80s, "gothic” was often synonymous with “romantic suspense,” but while the secretive atmosphere and mystery subplots remain, today’s gothics may or may not have happily-ever-after endings. What you’re more likely to find, along with a strong message of feminine agency, are women who find the strength to save themselves. In terms of characters and settings, the offerings today are considerably more diverse than those of yesteryear. To add unpredictability and additional suspense, their writers switch up the standard gothic tropes in intriguing ways. Key titles in this subgenre include Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Kate Morton’s sagas, Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, and Sarah Penner’s feminist gothic mysteries.

Below are two dozen gothic historicals appearing in 2024. I started out with a list of twelve and kept finding more, and I’m sure there are plenty I’ve left out.  Which ones will be added to your wishlist?

Jess Armstrong’s The Secret of the Three Fates (Minotaur, Dec.) introduces American Ruby Vaughn, in her second fiction outing, to seances along the Scottish border after WWI. The Book of Witching by C. J. Cooke (HarperCollins UK, Oct.) offers another original Gothic setting in its tale of two imperiled women in the present day and the 16th-century Orkney Islands. Moving ahead to the 1930s, Polly Crosby’s gothic mystery The House of Fever (HQ, Aug.) is set in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Pandora author Susan Stokes-Chapman’s second novel The Shadow Key (Harper Perennial, Sept; also Harvill Secker, Apr.) features a male protagonist, a physician encountering secrets on a remote estate in rural 18th-century Wales. Lizzie Pook’s Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge (Picador, Feb.) has a woman investigating her sister’s Arctic disappearance in Victorian London, while religious repression and sexism intermingle in Paulette Kennedy’s The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (Lake Union, Mar.), with a housewife in 1950s Missouri unexpectedly receiving messages from beyond the grave.

The title of Anna Noyes’ The Blue Maiden (Grove, Apr.) refers to an uninhabited Scandinavian island, one reputed to be the site of devil worshippers; a family on a neighboring island in the 19th century, descended from an accused witch, remains haunted by its legacy. Laura Purcell’s name should be familiar to fans of gothics; Moonstone (Magpie, May), her first YA, is a supernatural romance with LGBTQ rep set in the early 19th century. Del Sandeen’s fiction debut This Cursed House (Berkley, Oct), described as Southern gothic horror, has a Black woman from 1960s Chicago relocating to New Orleans to work for a family that’s been cursed. Kuchenga Shenjé’s The Library Thief (Hanover Square, May; also Sphere, Apr.) another debut, follows a Jamaican-born young woman in Victorian England who uncovers secrets in an estate’s private collection of rare books. Heading back to 16th-century Hungary, Sonia Velton’s The Nightingale’s Castle (Harper Perennial, July; also Abacus, May), looks into the notorious legend of “Blood Countess” Erzsébet Báthory. James Wade’s Hollow Out the Dark (Blackstone, Aug.), described as gothic adventure set in Depression-era Texas, has a WWI vet diving into dangerous situations and secrets.

Traditional gothic plots are infused with unique twists in all of these novels. In Kelsey James’ Secrets of Rose Briar Hall (Kensington, June), set in Gilded Age New York, a wealthy young wife awakens to a mystery and amnesia the night after a large society party. Nineteenth-century Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) follows Amara, a demon-priest’s daughter, as she tries to clear her father’s name in the dark supernatural tale Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley, Feb.). In 1860s Paris, two estranged sisters stage a haunting to scam a secretive family and pay their bills, but their attempted fraud backfires in Carmella Lowkis’s Spitting Gold (Atria, May). Elizabeth Macneal’s The Burial Plot (Picador UK, June), set in early Victorian England, also focuses on a pair of fraudsters, one of whom flees a risky situation by posing as a lady’s maid in a house full of secrets.  Hester Musson’s The Beholders (Fourth Estate, Jan.), her debut, involves a maid in Victorian England who unearths secrets about the mysterious household residents. In Regency-era Nova Scotia, Emeline, the protagonist in B. R. Myers’ The Third Wife of Faraday House (William Morrow, Aug.), discovers a surprise when she arrives at her prospective husband’s seaside manor: her predecessor is still alive.

Some more terrific settings in this batch! House of Shades by Lianne Dillsworth (Harper, July; also Hutchinson Heinemann, May) has the title character, a Black woman doctor, on a risky mission in 1830s London that threatens to reveal long-held mysteries. Chanel Cleeton takes a gothic turn in her latest, The House on Biscayne Bay (Berkley, Apr.), following two women decades apart who live at a glamorous mansion in south Florida. Donyae Coles’ debut, Midnight Rooms (Amistad, July), sees orphaned mixed-race heroine Orabella marrying a wealthy man she barely knows in 1840 England.  The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins (William Morrow, Aug.; also The Borough Press, May), best known for The Binding, is multi-period suspense about surprising discoveries made on a Greek island in the 1820s. Secrets and spirits from the Russian Revolution percolate into the 1920s in Olesya Salnikova Gilmore’s second novel, The Haunting of Moscow House (Berkley, Sept.), while Barbara Havelocke’s Estella’s Revenge (Canelo Hera, May) retells Great Expectations from the viewpoint of Miss Havisham’s daughter.