Kat Dunn

I think it's going to be a big Halloween for that.

My biggest horror book recommendation this year has been Hunger Stone by Kat Dunn.

It's a reimagining of Carmilla, which is the queer novella that was what Dracula was based on.

Oh, I know this.

Yes.

Rotten Heart by Kat Dunn.

Listener, if you have a soft spot for sweeping Victorian Gothic aesthetics, you need to pre-order this immediately.

This is a sapphic retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

And Kat Dunn is a phenomenal architect of Gothic atmosphere.

She really is.

She's already known for her previous work, Hungerstone, which was a brilliant re-imagining of the classic vampire story, Carmilla.

Why are contemporary queer authors so drawn to rewriting the classics or inserting themselves into these very specific European historical canons?

Sometimes it means trusting her to face it.

I'm beginning to think I should have organized this month's books by genre rather than setting, for we're back to the occult in Rotten Heart by Kat Dunn from Zando, which sets up a gender-flipped Hamlet.

1898, Hampstead, London.

Odette's mother is dead.

Authors exploit this by creating monsters that don't hide in the dark but rather sit across from you in the drawing room, offering an escape from a suffocating reality.

And there is no creature that embodies that seductive escape quite like the vampire, which brings us to Hungerstone by Kat Dunn.

The source describes this as a feminist re-imagining of the classic queer vampire novel Carmilla.

A fantastic source material to pull from.

Yeah, for sure.

Um, and then last but not least, because I love Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil so much, I have Hungerstone by Kat Dunn.

Good.

And I would like to read her new release, which I will, uh, look up the name of because I can't remember off the top of my head, but it is sapphic vampires, also very Gothic, so I, I usually give it as a comp to Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.