What is Folk Horror? Wikipedia offers a helpful explanation: Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk...
Earlier this year I recommended Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall (see the review here ), and it was shortly after reading that captivating novel that I learned Hand had been approved by Shirley Jackson’s estate to write a sequel to The Haunting of Hill House. I...
September’s offering for “Tea and a Book” is Jacob Kerr’s The Green Man of Eshwood Hall (2022), a disquieting mystery steeped in folk horror. This novel features a child as the protagonist, but the story is for adult readers. From the publisher: Eshwood Hall is a...
August's "Tea and a Book" offers Lanny by Max Porter, published in 2020 and long listed for the Booker Prize. This is a strange book with an experimental narrative style, but it swept me up so completely that I finished it in a day. (See more professional accolades...
For July's "Tea and a Book" I'm recommending The Wild Hunt, published in August 2022 by Tin House. Author Emma Seckel is a Canadian photographer and writer who has studied at St. Andrews and Cambridge. (No slouch, this one! Check out her website.) Seckel's debut novel...
June's offering is a novel I devoured a couple of years ago and lately was tempted to reread, particularly because of its folk horror elements. (I didn't know much about that genre when I first encountered the book.) I so enjoyed revisiting In the Night Wood and was...
Here I am again at the last minute with May's horror reading recommendation. Continuing with last month’s theme of folk horror, I offer a mysterious and romantic tale set in Cornwall shortly after World War II. Check out this synopsis from the publisher: In a Cornish...
This month I have another Gothic offering to enthusiastically recommend: Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand. [Is the above the UK cover? The PB edition? Not sure, but I like it.] Synopsis (from the publisher): When the young members of a British acid-folk band -- known...
