The Monster She Wrote Podcast

Tracy Cross is a dealer in dark fiction, her gripping stories featured in a range of podcasts and anthologies. Her debut novel, the gripping "Rootwork" (Dark Hart Publishing, November 2022), explores the strong bonds of family and draws on her own heritage in hoodoo. This is followed by "A Gathering of Weapons" (October 2024), the second book of the Rootwork series. Tracy resides in Washington, DC...

Banned Books Week (launched in 1982) is normally in September/October, but given the state of things, we thought it was a relevant topic. Buying physical copies of books, when you can, seems to be a smart thing to do.   PEN estimates that book bans have doubled in the past year; h ere's where to fight that by sending a letter to state lawmakers.    Some of our sources: Data from the ALA ; Unite Ag...

We are rerunning the classic episode to celebrate the upcoming release of Moths through Valancourt Books as part of their Monster, She Wrote series. Preorders open now, shipping in July 2025! Rosalind Ashe's Moths was marketed as a book for fans of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca . And there are some similarities: a beautiful old estate with a crumbling wing. A young wife who moves in determined to ma...

In "The End of the Voyage," a short story in Bora Chung's collection Your Utopia , a group escapes a pandemic here on Earth by jumping into a spaceship. As they search for a safe place to live, their trip takes a dark turn.    Recommended in this episode: Beach Read by Emily Henry   NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.   ...

In So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison, Sloane Parker HATES birthday celebrations, but her husband and best friend Naomi conspire to give Sloane a weekend away at a posh lakeside cottage. The girls' weekend away takes a dark and bloody turn, however, after a wild night out with some mysterious strangers.    Recommended in this episode: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas and A Perilous Undertaking by D...

Linghun by Ai Jiang is set in the mysterious HOME, a suburb of Toronto, where the residents live among the ghosts. Winqi, a high school senior, must navigate her new town, where grief cuts everyone off from the rest of the world.  Recommended in this episode: "The Center for Immortality Research" in Your Utopia by Bora Chung) and Mike Chen's Here and Now and Then NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop...

Last episode, we read the Gothic horror You'll Like My Mother by Naomi A. Hintze, which was recently re-released with Valancourt Books. In it, a pregnant widow named Francesca is trapped in her mother-in-law's home and must escape. This episode, we are discussing   The 1972 film adaptation of You'll Like My Mother , starring Patty Duke.  Recommended in this episode: Barstow by David Ian McKendry a...

Pregnant Francesca finds herself a widow at a young age after her husband is sent to Vietnam. Without support from her family, she embarks on a cross-country journey to her late husband's family home in Ohio. While she's never met her mother-in-law, she hopes that she will be welcomed in. His childhood home, though, is nothing like she was told it was–and her new mother-in-law might be more danger...

Mel and Lisa are busy gearing up for a new season in this new year! In the meantime, enjoy this classic episode of the podcast, perfect for the Gothic feeling that is January.  UP NEXT: Season 6 kicks off with Naomi A. Hintze's You'll Like my Mother .     

Enjoy this classic podcast episode and have a happy and safe holiday season! NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.  More info about the Canadian museum exhibit here: https://www.orillia.ca/en/visiting/exhibits.aspx?_mid_=28224 (Opening October 5 until December 20, 2024 - Temporary Exhibit) UP NEXT: The holiday season is app...

Enjoy this classic podcast episode and have a happy and safe holiday season! NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.  More info about the Canadian museum exhibit here: https://www.orillia.ca/en/visiting/exhibits.aspx?_mid_=28224 (Opening October 5 until December 20, 2024 - Temporary Exhibit) UP NEXT: The holiday season is app...

In Jenny Kiefer's This Wretched Valley , there is a bad place just off a highway in a secluded forest in Kentucky. When a small group made up of geology grad students and rock climbers set up camp there to document a previously unknown rock wall, they find more than they bargained for. The place is old. And it isn't always what it seems.       Recommended in this episode: Grady Hendrix's Witchcraf...

Jenny Kiefer is a debut author, avid rock climber, and Kentucky resident. She also owns and manages Butcher Cabin Books, a horror bookstore in Louisville, KY, with her mother. Her background is in copywriting and journalism, and she is the recipient of the Miracle Monocle Editor's Award for Emerging Writers and four Society of Professional Journalism Awards. She was a 2021 Pitch Wars mentee and is...

For Toil and Trouble , our book, we did a deep dive into research of the witch. And since the witch is a mainstay of this time of year, we thought it would be fun to do a little bit of a different episode today. We watched the first two episodes of Disney Plus's Agatha All Along .  NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses.    M...

In this episode, we are discussing Christa Carmen's meta Gothic novel  The Daughters of Block Island with special guest Crystal O'Leary-Davidson. Crystal O'Leary-Davidson, writing as C. O. Davidson has published fiction in PseudoPod, Cemetery Gates, and in anthologies, most recently Hard to Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic. Her story, "The Mark," in Vastarien, was recognized by editor Ell...

About The Unmothers : After the death of her husband, journalist Marshall is sent to the small town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor—that a horse has given birth to a human baby. As she's pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, she realizes Raeford may be harboring more dark secrets than she expected.   NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite...

Leslie J. Anderson has spent much of her life riding, training, and caring for horses. Her collection of poetry, An Inheritance of Stone, was nominated for an Elgin Award. She has a master's in creative writing from Ohio University and lives in Ohio with her family. The Unmothers  is her debut novel. NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out sma...

Joyce Carol Oates's story "The Long-Legged Girl" (collected in Night-Gaunts ) is part horror story, part cozy mystery…after all, the plot of the story revolves around a teapot. That tea contains poison, of course, but the sentiment is there nonetheless. Our story begins as a frustrated housewife hosts her professor-husband's young, gorgeous, and yes, long-legged student at their home.    NEWS: We...

Join Mel and Lisa as we discuss Tananarive Due's The Reformatory . When 12-year-old Robert Stephens is sent to Gracetown School For Boys, a reformatory, he finds himself in a nightmare. Like many children in Gracetown, Florida, he has a special ability to see ghosts, a "talent" which the warden exploits, charging Robbie with the task of getting rid of the "haints" of the boys who died because of t...

Join Lisa and Mel as they discuss Lora Senf's The Clackity . Young Evie lives with her aunt in Blight Harbor–a seemingly quiet small town where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other. There's just one small problem: it is the seventh most haunted town in America. Nearly everywhere you go, there are ghosts. Most are friendly. Still, there are some places everyone avoids. Like the ab...

 We have a bookshop.org shop set up. Now you can shop for all of your favorite horror books by women. You'll find Lisa's books, Mel's books, and the books you hear about on this podcast. Plus, bookshop helps small bookstores. Find all of our favorite books at Bookshop.org shop now!   

Mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, caring, and loving. And some are a bit more complicated. Sometimes it feels like a mother can be out to absolutely destroy your world–the mother at the heart of Gwendolyn Kiste's story "Your Mother's Love is an Apocalypse" (from the Mother Knows Best anthology) is of the latter ilk. Kiste explores the difficult mother-daughter relationship and a...

SPOILERS ABOUND! This novel contains a TWIST you don't want to ruin, so listen at your own risk.  Vesper Wright left home at eighteen to escape her family, who has been entrenched in a religious cult community for decades, and she hasn't looked back. That is, until she gets a wedding invitation for her childhood best friend's marriage to her high school love. She doesn't know who sent the invitati...

Tananarive Due's "Summer" (from her story collection Ghost Summer ) is set in her fictional town of Gracetown, Florida, where the humid and murky swamps hide bodies and demon leeches. It's not a place to raise a baby–or maybe it is.  Recommended in this episode: Shirley Jackson's Sundial and Netflix's Bridgerton UP NEXT: Rachel Harrison's Black Sheep Buy Toil and Trouble here!  

Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a big house right on the Chicago river, where they are dealing with the grief following the aftermath of a family tragedy and the dead bodies that keep floating to the surface of the water. So join us as we discuss Cynthia Pelayo's Forgotten Sisters, a novel that is part ghost story, part fairy tale, and part real-life Chicago history.  Recommended in this episode:...