Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction
About this audiobook
Satisfy your craving for extraordinary authors and exceptional fiction: Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.
Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction.
Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier—and who liked to wear topless gowns to the theater? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era.
You’ll meet celebrated icons, such as Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews; forgotten wordsmiths Eli Coltor and Ruby Jean Jensen; and today’s vanguard, Helen Oyeyemi. Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.
Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.
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About the author
Lisa Kröger ’s short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine and the anthology Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2018). She has contributed to The Encyclopedia of the Vampire (Greenwood Press, 2010), and Horror Literature through History (ABC-CLIO, 2017). She holds a PhD in English.
Melanie R. Anderson is an assistant professor of English at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Her academic publication Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison (University of Tennessee Press, 2013) was a winner of the 2014 South Central MLA Book Prize. She holds a PhD in American literature. Lisa and Melanie cohost The Know Fear Cast, a biweekly podcast discussing horror in popular culture (KnowFearCast.com).
Erin Bennett is an actress, a singer, and a voiceover artist. As an actress, she has performed at numerous theaters, including the Pasadena Playhouse, the Arizona Theatre Company, and the International City Theatre. Her voiceover work includes animation, BBC radio plays, video games, commercials for radio and television, and a wide range of audiobooks, including contemporary fiction, mysteries, science fiction, and romance.
