Urban Gothic Recs

I put out some calls for recommendations for ‘urban gothic’ across Facebook and BlueSky, and got some really interesting responses, as well as ideas on what ‘urban gothic’ is. Ramsey Campbell posted a snippet of horror in a multi-storey car park as a comment in one group, which I can’t share here obviously but was fun to receive! (Books of Horror fb group is a good one for book recs!)

I posted some prompts to give a flavour of what I personally might class as ‘urban gothic’:

decaying high rises with mould and rot eating into the residents’ soulseerie, dingy labyrinthine passages & alleys leading to dead ends and hiding dark secretsechoing corridors of worryingly silent hotels, where human connection is only theoretical and other people are only seen in glimpses, like ghostsdouble lives flipping honest, respectable glitz and glamour with seedy underbelly and lies

This got us into discussions of genre and subgenre, like ‘Liminal Horror’ and ‘Urban Paranormal’. Loads to think about! Maybe you would disagree with the recs being ‘urban gothic’ – I’m not sure they all fit my own definitions as I haven’t read them all – but I’m including all the ones people said. (MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was also suggested, for example, but I’d say that’s not urban as it doesn’t take place in a city or urban space for the majority of the book, but I think maybe the person who suggested that had a different view because it was contemporary and the lead is a city girl and it opens in an city setting.)

Recommendation List

GILDED NEEDLES – Michael McDowell

THE GRAVEYARD APARTMENT – Mariko Koike

THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB – John Saul

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS – Iain Reed

HOUSE OF LEAVES – Mark Z. Danielewski

LESSER DEAD – Christopher Buehlman

MYCOPHILIA – C. B. Blanchard (free to read here)

MUNICIPAL GOTHIC – Ray Newman

DARK CITIES – Christopher Golden

THE WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH – Connie Willis

THE FORGOTTEN – Clive Barker

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN – Clive Barker

THE MARIGOLD – Andrew F. Sullivan

SISTER MAIDEN MONSTER – Lucy A. Snyder

MINTY FRESH – J. Corvine

THE GOLDEN PERSIMMON – Lindsay Merbaum

THE CITY AND THE CITY – China Mieville