Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, All the Hearts You Eat, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction.
"I have a soft spot for the beach outside the thrills of summertime," she writes at CrimeReads. It's an atmosphere shared by her modern coastal gothic, All the Hearts You Eat. One title on her list of "books that will coil you in that delicious dismal atmosphere and never let go:"
Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin StarlingRead about another entry on the list.
I’m realizing now that setting as character can’t help being a defining quality when you’re looking at atmosphere—Yellow Jessamine fits the bill, too, both with the port city of Delphinium and the soon-to-be-overgrown manor of Evelyn Perdanu, filled with secrets, science, and the pall of death. Decay rules this world, a unifying factor of land, sea, and people, and no amount of loyalty from Evelyn’s attendant Violetta or betrayal from other merchants and nobles can deter what’s to come. This is a brisk, engrossing novella by the sea, and for me, Starling at her gothic best.
--Marshal Zeringue
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