The 79 best supernatural and gothic books by women

No. 11 on this list. The Mysteries of Udolpho · Ann Radcliffe · 1794

The Mysteries of Udolpho is a foundational text taught in 18th-century literature, Gothic studies, and women's writing courses in universities worldwide. Its Wikipedia article spans over 40 languages. Jane Austen's parody in Northanger Abbey has guaranteed it a permanent place in the British literary canon—any reader of Austen eventually encounters Udolpho. It sits at the center of every Gothic fiction course.

No. 12 on this list. The Ballad of the Sad Café · Carson McCullers · 1951

Miss Amelia Evans runs the general store in a nameless Georgia mill town: six feet two inches tall, with bones and muscles like a man, a medical skill she deploys without a license, and a decade-old marriage she annulled after ten days by throwing her husband Marvin Macy out the front door. Then one April evening a hunchbacked dwarf named Cousin Lymon arrives, claims kinship, and Miss Amelia does something no one has ever seen her do — she opens a room, sets out chairs, and pours her whiskey. The café lasts six years. Carson McCullers frames the whole story as a meditation on the nature of love, delivered by an omniscient narrator who stops the plot to lecture us directly: the lover and the beloved are never, in any real sense, the same person. One gives; the other merely consents to be loved. Marvin Macy, released from prison, walks back into town, and Cousin Lymon falls for him immediately and completely. Everything that follows is as inevitable as a Greek tragedy, and as inexplicable. The novella ends where it begins — the café boarded up, Miss Amelia alone upstairs, her face pressed to a crack in the shutters. McCullers writes Southern Gothic without blood and salvation — just loneliness, desire, and the strange temporary grace of a room where people are allowed to linger.

No. 13 on this list. The Ghost Road · Pat Barker · 1995

Appears on 60 university syllabi (44th percentile in the Open Syllabus Project), placing it in the mid-range of taught texts — present in British literature and WWI courses but not ubiquitously assigned. Its Wikipedia article exists in only 4 languages and runs to 4,328 characters, indicating limited global reach compared to more canonical war texts.

No. 14 on this list. Löwensköld Trilogy · Selma Lagerlöf · 1925

Three generations of Swedish women are shaped by a curse and a ring in 18th-century Sweden. Lagerlöf's trilogy combines historical fiction with supernatural elements in her characteristically vivid storytelling.

No. 15 on this list. The Birds and Other Stories · Daphne du Maurier · 1952

'The Birds' is among the most recognized short stories in 20th-century British fiction, secured in the cultural consciousness by Hitchcock's 1963 film adaptation. The story appears regularly on British school syllabi and in anthologies of horror and psychological fiction. The rest of the collection occupies a respected but secondary position — 'The Apple Tree' and 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' appear in some anthologies, but du Maurier's short fiction as a whole holds a lower academic profile than her novels. The collection does not feature on many university core reading lists outside British literature survey courses.

No. 16 on this list. The City We Became · N.K. Jemisin · 2020

Hugo nominee. One of the most prominent urban fantasies of the 2020s. Jemisin's reputation carries weight.

No. 17 on this list. Her Body and Other Parties · Carmen Maria Machado · 2017

Appears on 235 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus, placing it in the 59th percentile—strong for a 2017 debut collection. Taught primarily in contemporary fiction, queer literature, and creative writing courses. Wikipedia article exists with a dedicated Reception section. Too recent to have achieved canonical status, but its syllabi trajectory suggests staying power in the short story and gender studies curricula.

No. 18 on this list. The Italian · Ann Radcliffe · 1796

The Italian is a fixture of Gothic and Romantic-era survey courses, though it's taught less universally than Radcliffe's own The Mysteries of Udolpho or than Frankenstein and Dracula within the wider Gothic canon. No syllabus or Wikipedia-language data was available for this title in our database, but it holds a stable place in history-of-the-novel curricula.

No. 19 on this list. Gideon the Ninth · Tamsyn Muir · 2019

Hugo and Nebula finalist. A defining work of 2010s genre fiction with a devoted fanbase.

No. 20 on this list. The Little Stranger · Sarah Waters · 2009

Taught in schools: Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Waterss most thrilling and ambitious novel yet. After her award-winning trilogy of victorian novels, sarah waters turned to the 1940s and wrote the night watch, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime britain shortlisted for both the orange and the man booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart in a dusty post-war summer in rural warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at hundreds hall home to the ayres family for over two centuries, the georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine but are the ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life little does dr faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his prepare yourself from this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.

No. 21 on this list. The Mermaid of Black Conch · Monique Roffey · 2020

This enchanting tale of a cursed mythical creature and the lonely fisherman who falls in love with her is “a daring, mesmerizing novel…single-handedly bringing magic realism up-to-date” (Maggie O’Farrell, best-selling author of Hamnet). “Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside…. You might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.” —The New York Times In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a creature he doesn’t expect: a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman. Now David must work to win Aycayia’s trust while she relearns what it is to be human, navigating not only her new body but also her relationship with others on the island—a difficult task after centuries of loneliness. As David and Aycayia grow to love each other, they juggle both the joys and the dangers of life on shore. But a lingering question remains: Will the former mermaid be able to escape her curse? Taking on many points of view, this mythical adventure tells the story of one woman’s return to land, her healing, and her survival.

No. 22 on this list. Don't Look Now · Daphne du Maurier · 1971

Daphne du Maurier's 'Don't Look Now' (1971), the story of a grieving English couple in Venice, is her most anthologised short story and a staple of courses on Gothic and horror fiction. NYRB Classics named its selection of her stories after it, with an introduction by Patrick McGrath.

No. 23 on this list. Things We Lost in the Fire · Mariana Enriquez · 2016

International Booker shortlist. Widely reviewed and translated. Establishing canonical status in world literature and horror.

No. 24 on this list. Fever Dream · Samanta Schweblin · 2017

Amanda wakes in a rural Argentine clinic, her daughter Nina beside her, neither able to remember what happened. David, a strange local boy, helps her reconstruct events through a fractured dialogue. Schweblin's uncanny novella builds inexorable dread as it probes environmental disaster, motherhood, and the terror of contamination.

No. 25 on this list. Get in Trouble · Kelly Link · 2016

Link's stories occupy the space between fantasy and reality, where the rules of genre bend and break. A girl lives in a house with her superhero boyfriend; a grandmother builds a haunted house; teenagers in a pocket universe wait for rescue. The prose is deadpan and luminous, each story's strangeness grounded in emotional specificity. Link is often called a fabulist, but her concerns are human: loneliness, desire, the hope that somewhere there is a place where we belong.

No. 26 on this list. Interview with the Vampire · Anne Rice · 1976

Interview with the Vampire (1976) is regularly taught in courses on the Gothic and on the vampire in literature, and it is one of the best-known works of modern vampire fiction. It is not, however, part of the general literary canon.

No. 27 on this list. The Empusium · Olga Tokarczuk · 2022

Published in 2022, The Empusium is too recent for curriculum adoption. No confirmed syllabus appearances exist yet, and Wikipedia data was not found for this title in isolation. Tokarczuk's older works—Flights and The Books of Jacob—have broader academic presence. As a Nobel author's recent work it will gain critical traction, but canonical status takes time.

No. 28 on this list. The Romance of the Forest · Ann Radcliffe · 1791

The Romance of the Forest (1791) is kept in print by Oxford World's Classics and appears on courses in the Gothic novel and eighteenth-century fiction, though less often than The Mysteries of Udolpho. It is a standard text for specialists rather than general readers.

No. 29 on this list. Her Fearful Symmetry · Audrey Niffenegger · 2010

At last: another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers — normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin . . . but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother — and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat . . . With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.

No. 30 on this list. The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob · George Eliot · 1864

The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob are George Eliot's two shorter fictions, often published together, as in Oxford World's Classics. The Lifted Veil is read in courses on Victorian Gothic and science, but neither is taught like her major novels.