Paulette Kennedy is the author of
The Artist of Blackberry Grange (2025),
The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (2024),
The Witch of Tin Mountain (2023), and
Parting the Veil
(2021), which received the HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been featured in
People Magazine,
The Mary Sue,
Paste Magazine, and BookBub. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in gothic fog.
[
The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil;
The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport;
My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange]
At CrimeReads Kennedy tagged "
seven novels [that] combine aspects of sci-fi, romance, magic, and fantasy with the traditional conventions of the Gothic genre to create something new and fresh." One title on the list:
In The Garden of Monsters by Crystal King
Lush, sensual, and steeped in mythology, In The Garden of Monsters is a darkly entrancing Gothic fairy tale that reimagines the story of Hades and 
Persephone through the eyes of an artist’s model suffering from amnesia. When Julia Lombardi receives an invitation to pose for famed artist Salvador Dali in the Sacro Bosco, Italy’s famed Garden of Monsters, she’d be foolish to refuse. But when she arrives at the Palazzo Orsini, Julia has the odd sensation that she’s been there before. Their enigmatic and charming host, Ignazio, is strangely familiar, and plies Julia with decadent meals garnished with pomegranate seeds. Convinced that she is the goddess Persephone, Dali pleads with Julia to consume the seeds so she can rejoin her king in the Underworld. As Julia explores the palazzo and the Sacro Bosco, strange visions and memories disturb her waking and sleeping hours, leading her to wonder whether there might be some truth to Dali’s fanatical obsessions.
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
(2021), which received the HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been featured in People Magazine, The Mary Sue, Paste Magazine, and BookBub. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in gothic fog.
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