Each week we have a book group on Mondays and Tuesdays. There are two slots: 10 am Tuesday and 7 pm Monday (BST) and you’re very welcome to either, wherever you are in the world and however much you’d like to participate. To sign up get in touch with @RomGothSam on twitter or send an email to sam@romancingthegothic.com
From April, meetings will be held at 7pm on Mondays and then 10am on Tuesdays (all times British time)
SIGN UP for individual author visits here
15th/16th June
This week’s talk focuses on Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti so we’re going to read the original poem and a few short stories riffing on it. The only ones that’s buy only is the one in the picture above Laini Taylor’s ‘Goblin Fruit’
The Goblin Market – Read it here
‘Pico, Pico, Mandorico’ by Rosario Ferre – Read it here
‘Advice for your first time at the Faerie market’ by Nibedita Sen – Read it here
22nd/23rd June
This week’s talk is on Mathilda by Mary Shelley so we’re reading it. Simples!
Content Note: Suicide
6th/7th July
Please note, there is a two week gap here as we will not be having book-group on the 29th/30th
Fleeing her mistakes in Glasgow for a marriage of convenience, Norah Mackenzie’s new home on an estate far in the north of Scotland is a chance for freedom, a fresh start. But in the dim, draughty corridors of Corrain House, something is very wrong. Despite their warm correspondence, her distant, melancholic husband does not seem to know her. She is plagued by ghost ships on the sea, spectres at the corner of her eye, by winding, grasping roots. Her only possible companion, the housekeeper Agnes Gunn, is by turns unnerving and alluring, and harbours uncanny secrets of her own.
As the foundations crumble beneath her feet, Norah must uncover the truth about Corrain House, her husband, Agnes, and herself, if she is to find the freedom she has been chasing.
13th/14th July
We don’t often read zombie fic so thought it was time for a little novella.
When Kristina rises from her violent death, she’s not the same fragile woman her family once abandoned. She’s rageful, powerful, and hungry—for the blood of the ones who were supposed to love her. With a newfound craving to see vengeance and grief served, she launches into a once-in-an-undead-lifetime journey across blood-slicked highways to the scorched Australian bush and her hometown. As her body fails and her mind fractures, she’s left with one final question: Is she here to forgive, or to feed?
13th/14th July
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.
Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.
As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.
20th/21st July
Years ago, Old Earth sent forth sisters and brothers into the vast dark of the prodigal colonies armed only with crucifixes and iron faith. Now, the sisters of the Order of Saint Rita are on an interstellar mission of mercy aboard Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a living, breathing ship which seems determined to develop a will of its own.
When the order receives a distress call from a newly-formed colony, the sisters discover that the bodies and souls in their care—and that of the galactic diaspora—are in danger. And not from void beyond, but from the nascent Central Governance and the Church itself.
Romancing the Gothic 