Anne Rice- New Novel " The Wolf Gift"

www.gothicteasociety.com

"The Wolf Gift" features a handsome young reporter in the Bay Area who finds himself at the center of the story when he's attacked by a werewolf, and turns into a wolf man himself. (He documents his new hairy look with his iPhone.) He's not your typical feral, rampaging beast: The lunar cycle has no effect on him, he learns to control his transformation and he only unleashes his beastly appetite on the truly wicked." 

You can read more about the book and an interview with Ms. Rice HERE

Charles Dickens 200, Google Art

www.gothicteasociety.com

Google tribute to

Charles Dickens who turns 200 today!

Charles John Huffam Dickens 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.

The Motionless Dream

This lovely book is available now. I sent for my own copy the moment it was available. I love it.  The book can be ordered HERE

New Book! The Addams Family- America's Favorite Gothic Family

Addams Family fans! There is a wonderful new book out about America's Favorite Gothic family from Pomegranate Communications entitled The Addams Family: An Evilution.

 If you are anything like me, you watched the T.V. Show The Addams Family faithfully. But did you ever wonder where the Addams Family started?  I did, and  I really enjoyed learning more about this creepy, kooky family, how each character came to be, and the man behind the pencil! There are 10 chapters, one for each main character- including the house, which is a character unto itself! 

“Why can’t you just spank us like the other mommies?”

 If you are expecting to already know all about Morticia, Gomez, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Thing, Lurch and the extended family because you watched the T.V. show, you will be in for a few surprises. They are even more delightfully morbid than you imagined! And if you were fortunate enough to be familiar with the cartoon series then this book will be an extra treat for you since there are 50 images in this book that are in print for the first time!

A few of the Addams Family cartoon characters had their debut in a 1938 issue of the New Yorker magazine,  but they were not know as the Addams Family at the time.  Their creepy, spooky humor caught on, later moving to television and even the silver screen.

This is a nice book, beautifully printed, interesting and full of pictures (over 200 of Charles Addams illustrations) I have included a few of my favorites here- used with permission. This book would make a great gift as well, so pick one up for yourself and for the darkling in your life. I highly enjoyed it and will covet it for years to come. 

“Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!”

Here is a little wikihistory on Charles Addams:

Charles Samuel Addams ( January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters. Some of the recurring characters, who became known as The Addams Family, became the basis for two live-action television series, two cartoon series, three motion pictures, and a play.

His cartoons regularly appeared in The New Yorker, and he also created a syndicated comic strip, Out of This World, which ran in 1956. There are many collections of his work, including Drawn and Quartered(1942) and Monster Rally (1950), the latter with a foreword by John O'Hara. Typical of Addams's work, one cartoon shows two men standing in a room labeled "Patent Attorney." One is pointing a bizarre gun out the window toward the street and saying, "Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn't even slow them up!"

“The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus.”

Dear Dead Days (1959), one of the rarest Addams books, is not a collection of his cartoons (although it reprints a few from previous collections); it is a bizarre scrapbook-like compendium of vintage images (and occasional pieces of text) that appealed to Addams's sense of the grotesque, including Victorian woodcuts, vintage medicine-show advertisements, and a boyhood photograph of Francesco Lentini, who had three legs.

Addams kept a collection of crossbows on the wall of his study and used a little girl's tombstone for a coffee table, but Janet Maslin, in a review of an Addams biography for The New York Times, wrote, "Addams's persona sounds cooked up for the benefit of feature writers ... was at least partly a character contrived for the public eye," noting that one outré publicity photo showed the humorist wearing a suit of armor at home, "but the shelves behind him hold books about painting and antiques, as well as a novel by John Updike."

Addams's popularity is reflected in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest; Cary Grant references Charles Addams in the auction scene. Discovering Eve with Mr. Vandamm and Leonard, he says, "The three of you together. Now that's a picture only Charles Addams could draw." He is also mentioned as "Chas Addams" (how he usually signed his cartoons) in Edward Eager's fantasy novel Knight's Castle.

After his death a cartoon ran depicting his Addams Family standing vigil before his grave while Addams crawled out the other side. A Charles Addams Art Scholarship was founded in 1991.

Addams died September 29, 1988, at St. Clare's Hospital and Health Center in New York City, having suffered a heart attack while parked in his car. An ambulance brought him from his apartment to the hospital, where he died in the emergency room. As he had requested, a wake was held; he had wished to be remembered as a "good cartoonist."

All images © Tee and Charles Addams Foundation / Courtesy Pomegranate Communications.

Happy Birthday Edward Gorey

Edward St. John Gorey (ca. February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.

Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following.

I adore anything Gorey!

Who doesn't love the crumbtinies?

Thank you  Edward Gorey, and Happy Birthday!

Ozzy Osbourne

If like me, you are an Ozzy fan, this book will  likely be an enjoyable read for you. It is Ozzy's life as he remembers it. He tells you up front he is not going to argue facts, and yes he was almost always high on one thing or another, but here is how it all happened according to what he can remember.

I have laughed out loud several time while reading. I enjoyed it immensely.  Ozzy's humble background really comes across, he is a working class kid who somehow despite the odds has become an icon of music. He is after all the Prince of Darkness- but with a heart of gold! 

Click the book link , in the carousel at the top of the page for more reviews and information.

Wisconsin Death Trip

I was given a copy of this book many years ago. It remains a classic of sorts for those interested in postmortem photography and obscure history. Here is but one documentary available about the book and photographs. The book has also been made into a movie.

Wisconsin Death Trip is a non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, first published in 1973. It has been adapted into a film.

The book is based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick, mostly in the city of Black River Falls, and local news reports from the same period. It emphasizes the harsh aspects of Midwestern rural life under the pressures of crime, disease, mental illness, and urbanization.

The film, which was directed by James Marsh and starred Marcus Monroe, was released in 2000. In a docudrama style, and shot entirely in black-and-white (except for contrasting sequences of modern life in the area, in color), it combined re-enactments of some of the events described in the book with a voice-over narration by Ian Holm. Its visual style was intended to carry the content of the film - as Marsh said:"I wanted to convey in the film the real pathos contained in a four line newspaper report that simultaneously records and dismisses the end of someone’s life"

Anne Rice- is she back?

One of my favorite authors was always Anne Rice. As many of you may know, several years back Anne made a personal decision to cease her Vampire series, and begin to address more christian topics in her writing. I lost track of her after that.

But this new tome, which should be in stores now has me intrigued. The synopsis has a ring of the Anne that I couldn't wait to read! Has anyone read this yet?

"Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time past—a metaphysical thriller about angels and assassins.

The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”

Into O’Dare’s nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O’Dare, who long ago dreamt of being a priest but instead came to embody danger and violence, seizes his chance. Now he is carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to dark realms where accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews, where children suddenly die or disappear . . . In this primitive setting, O’Dare begins his perilous quest for salvation, a journey of danger and flight, loyalty and betrayal, selflessness and love."

Slammerkin

Slammerkin
by Emma Donoghue

"Slammerkin, noun, eighteenth century of unknown origin. 1. A loose gown. 2. A loose woman."

This is a very well written and thoroughly enjoyable book, one that I simply could not put down when I read it the first time!

Born to rough cloth in working-class London in 1748, Mary Saunders hungers for linen and lace. Her lust for a shiny red ribbon leads her to a life of prostitution at a young age, where she encounters a freedom unknown to virtuous young women. But a dangerous misstep sends her fleeing to Monmouth and the refuge of the middle-class household of Mrs. Jones, to become the seamstress her mother always expected her to be and to live the ordinary life of an ordinary girl. Although Mary becomes a close confidante of Mrs. Jones, her desire for a better life leads her back to prostitution. She remains true only to the three rules she learned on the streets of London: Never give up your liberty; Clothes make the woman; Clothes are the greatest lie ever told. In the end, it is clothes, their splendor and their deception, that lead Mary to disaster.

Favorite Things

Lady Audley's Secret follows Robert Audley through his detective-like work in trying to uncover what happened to his friend George Talboys and who his uncle's wife, Lucy Audley, really is. During his search, Robert has to deal with lies, deceit, and even an attempt to kill him.



The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a "whodunnit" novel by Charles Dickens, his last novel left unfinished at his death in 1870. The story centers on the disappearance of Edwin Droods. John Jasper, Drood's uncle, leads a double life as cathedral choirmaster and opium addict. Secretly, Jasper regularly travels to London opium den to satisfy his craving. Edwin Drood is engaged to Rosa Bud as a child, but the couple don't have special affection for each other, simply, not in love, so their engagement is dissolved. Jasper holds a passion for Rosa. The story thickens as Edwin Drood disappears on a Christmas Eve after a raging thunderstorm. Because of the author's death and the novel left uncompleted, there have been speculations as to what might have happened, or how Dickens might have wanted the story to end. Most commentators presume the obvious, that Jasper murdered Drood. Some events are not clear, for example, the orphaned twins who come to live with Mr Crisparkle in Cloisterham or about Dick Datchery, the disguised detective who arrives to investigate Drood's disappearance.



In a surreal turn-of-the-century London, Gabriel Syme, a poet, is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard. Lucian Gregory, an anarchist poet, is the only poet in Saffron Park, until he loses his temper in an argument over the purpose of poetry with Gabriel Syme, who takes the opposite view. After some time, the frustrated Gregory finds Syme and leads him to a local anarchist meeting-place to prove that he is a true anarchist. Instead of the anarchist Gregory getting elected, the officer Syme uses his wits and is elected as the local representative to the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. The Council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name; Syme is given the name of Thursday. In his efforts to thwart the council's intentions, however, he discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was just as mysteriously employed and assigned to defeat the Council of Days. They all soon find out that they are fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of the genius Sunday. In a dizzying and surreal conclusion, the six champions of order and former anarchist ring-leaders chase down the disturbing and whimsical Sunday, the man who calls himself "The Peace of God".

Goth Chic

Goth Chic is an exhaustive, encyclopedic gathering of all things Gothic, from movies to music, fashion to funerals and everything in between. If it fits into the goth subculture, you'll find it in here. And there are pictures! Pretty!
You can buy it, new or used, HERE.

The Red Tree

Do you like Neil Gaiman? Clive Barker? Poppy Z. Brite? H.P. Lovecraft? Good, then you'll like Caitlin Kiernan too. Caitlin's been around for a while, churning out works of primal horror such as Threshold, Silk and Low Red Moon.  She also wrote one of my most favorite Lovecraft inspired short stories: "A Redress For Andromeda" which you really should dig up if you can manage it.

Now she's back with The Red Tree, the story of Sarah, a grieving author who abandons Atlanta for rural Rhode Island, renting a broken down house out in the boonies. When she finds a half finished manuscript in the basement, left behind by the previous owner (who later killed himself) she becomes obsessed - just as he had - with a humungous red oak tree growing on the property. Is the tree Evil Incarnate, or is Sarah just losing her mind? Or both?

I'm not finished with it yet, but I gotta tellya - I have a hard time putting it down at night. It's so melancholy and autumnal (despite its summer setting) and yet crazy intense and downright freaky. Perfect reading for the upcoming Halloween season.

The Recently Deflowered Girl-Part 3

A somewhat little known, and hard to find work by Edward Gorey from 1965, more coming up at a later time.

Gothic Charm School ~ The Book!

"Subversion through politeness" is the main thought behind the new book 'Gothic Charm School- An essential guide for Goths and those who love them' by Jillian Venters. I bought the book and read it on my first few hours of jury duty a few weeks ago. While it can be enjoyed by even us 'Elder Goths', my feeling was that it was well suited to the young Goth. I would have loved to have a tome such as this back in the 1970's when I was coming of age. Ms Venters asks us black clad folk to use manners to change societies view of the Goth and I think that is a marvelous idea! I will recommend the book to parents of young Goths, what a great gift! Available at most book stores or on line of course.
Along with the Website which can be found HERE, Ms Venters has a new, ongoing series of videos that are enjoyable as well. You can find them on her website under 'Media'

The Good House

I love a good, well-told tale of demonic possession, but unfortunately often have trouble finding them, whether in book or film form. Movie-wise, you can't go wrong with The Exorcist and/or The Exorcism of Emily Rose and book-wise, I'll always recommend A Good And Happy Child by Justin Evans.

The Good House by Tananarive Due is a tale of modern day demonic possession with an African American slant. After the suicide of her only child, Angela Toussaint is inconsolable. However, when she returns to the house of her childhood, the house where her voodoo priestess grandmother once battled demons, an ancient evil is reawakened and threatens everyone that Angela cares about...including Angela herself.

This book is absolutely chilling and is one of the few books I've ever read that actually scared the shit out of me. Click HERE to read a foreboding excerpt.

A Good and Happy Child

This is one of perhaps half a dozen books that actually scared the crap out of me.

This tale of the demonic possession of a young boy in 1970s upper crust New England is so horrifying because it's written in such a matter-of-fact manner. There's no projectile vomiting of pea soup or masturbating with crucifixes. Instead, it's a subtly disturbing story of mental illness and honest-to-gosh demons, who select their victims very carefully and "seduce" them into becoming vessels for absolute evil. Several events depicted in the book are based on eyewitness accounts of actual exorcisms. 

(and in case anyone is curious, the other books which succeeded in scaring the metaphorical excrement from my lower intestines were: House Of Leaves, World War Z, The Great God Pan and several Lovecraft tales, particularly The Shunned House.)

Past-Mortem

Anyone who suffered through the emotional rape of bullying, whether it happened on the playground in kindergarten or in the employee break room last week, should read this novel.

And yes, that is Ben Elton as in "The Young Ones" Kendall Mintcake.

It's not the most perfect book ever written - the ending is predictable as hell and the character of Natasha is an annoying stereotype - but the points that the book has to make about the long lasting effects of bullying are spot on. It's a gruesome little mystery that'll have you wincing at the depictions of rough sex as much as at the manner of murder that a British serial killer employs to exact revenge on the toughest of bullies.

Have a read, why don't you?

The Awakening~ Kate Chopin

This is one of my favorite books and most enjoyed authors. If you have never read her, you might want to!
The Awakening is a short novel by Kate Chopin (February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904), first published in 1899. It is widely considered to be a proto-feminist precursor to American modernism. The novel chronicles the life of Edna Pontellier, the book’s protagonist, as she examines her happiness, role as a mother, and place in society. The novel is commonly studied to review feminist issues, and discover underlying controversies, as well as the reasons why Chopin chose to include these issues in her novel. It has also been condemned for its overwhelming use of complex sexual themes, which caused a major uproar when the novel was first published.
The novel is written from Kate Chopin’s unique point of view. She was courageously willing to go against society and her previous writing style. This type of writing adds controversy and provokes thought from her readers. It was not common to read about women experiencing these types of issues. Women were looking for a strong, independent role model. Chopin simply gave her readers her version of the ideal woman. According to literary critic, Emily Toth, Chopin’s views were contrasted to the proper roles of women during her time, and her observations were ostracized by society.

The Awakening begins with the Pontellier family vacationing at the summer resort of Grand Isle. Edna, the protagonist, is the wife of a successful businessman, Léonce. Edna, her husband, and their two sons have rented a cottage at the resort. Since Léonce is constantly occupied with his work, Edna begins to rely on others in Grand Isle for company. She spends most of her time with a close friend named Adele Ratignolle; Adele acts a second mother to Edna, and teaches her many important life lessons during their time together. Later, she meets Robert Lebrun, who is the son of the woman who manages the cottages on Grand Isle. Robert has a notorious reputation for choosing one woman and acting as her attendant each summer. This summer proves to be no different, as he and Edna get to know each other better. Towards the end of the vacation, she begins to fall passionately in love with him. However, Robert realizes this relationship is ultimately a forbidden love, so he quickly makes a plan to run off to Mexico to get away and ponder his relationship with Edna.

Once Edna and her family are back at their home in New Orleans, she is a completely different woman. Edna seems to be giving up her old life, which she believes was trapping her for the majority of her adult years. Léonce eventually calls in a doctor to diagnose her, but no progress is made as he can find nothing physically wrong with her. Her husband decides to leave her home while he goes away on a business trip. At this point in the story, Edna isolates herself and ignores her regular responsibilities. She eventually moves out of her house. Moving out of the house is the point in the story where her rebellion has now reached a new extreme. She rejects everything around her, including her children, giving no thought about the future. Much to her chagrin, while Léonce is gone, she has an affair with Alcée Arobin, who has been given the reputation as the town’s biggest flirt. Nevertheless, he is only able to satisfy her sexual desires for a short time.

Eventually Robert returns to express his true feelings for her. Unfortunately, their reunion is interrupted as Edna is called away to help Adèle with her difficult childbirth. Adèle then attempts to convince Edna to think of everything she is sacrificing for this relationship. She tries to remind her of the life she once had, her husband, her children, her place in society, and her duties. When she returns home, she finds a note left from Robert, saying he has left and will not be returning. Reading his words, Edna now feels completely alone in the world. She returns to Grand Isle, where ironically, she learned to swim earlier that summer.

Incubus

This is perfect summer reading for the devoted horror fan!

Incubus is the story of an isolated Maine town, afflicted by a severe heat wave in the summer of 1974. As temperatures rise, strange phenomena descends upon the town. One by one, the women fall victim to nightly sexual attacks perpetrated by an unseen force. Could there be a demon in their midst? Sensible minister's wife Cora sets out to learn the truth in this updated take on the tale of Persephone and Demeter.

This is truly fascinating stuff, frightening and terrifyingly realistic without being overtly graphic. The depictions of the small town life are absolutely beautiful, from the tending of gardens and the cooking of meals to the rediscovery of Women's Lib and Goddess worship. This is one of my personal all-time favorite books - picked it up on a whim one day and have read it and re-read it to shreds. 

Ann Arensberg's "Incubus" is out of print - sad, but true - but amazon has plenty of used copies ranging in price from 1 penny to 94 cents! What do you have to lose besides a dollar?

The Recently Deflowered Girl- Part 2

A somewhat little known, and hard to find work by Edward Gorey from 1965, more coming up at a later time.