Research Reads – The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall

Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! Please enjoy The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall, pictured here with the books that helped me write it.

The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall is a sapphic love letter to the Gothic romance tradition. It was challenging but also a lot of fun to write, and a wonderful opportunity to indulge my love of spooky horror.

Most of the research was similar to what I’d read for my other Victorian romances. However, my Gothic lesbian romance involved a lot more corsets and chatelaines!

Books shown here include…

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – The 1940 film is my mother’s favorite movie, so having seen it more than a dozen times in my life, picking up the novel felt only natural to me. The book is darker and more obscure, with the brooding husband’s motivations more uncertain to the narrator, and the deceased Rebecca herself more wicked, at least by his account. The sapphic undertones of the film become even more overt in the book; to say nothing of the sapphic experiences of the author’s own life.

• Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness – This artbook of the film is not just a visual feast but also a fascinating peek into the behind-the-scenes of a cinematic masterpiece, filled to the brim with beautiful antiques and brilliant historical touches.

• To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol Wallace – I don’t actually recommend this one. While it gives a good overview of late 19th century American heiresses marrying bankrupt English nobility, it takes a disturbingly frivolous tone when discussing spousal abuse.

• How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman

• Food and Cooking in Victorian England by Andrea Broomfield

• Daily Life in Victorian England by Sally Mitchell

• Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders

• The Victorian City by Judith Flanders

• Consuming Passions by Judith Flanders

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The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall is a Gothic romance rife with horror and heartache, wherein an American heiress makes an ill-advised marriage to bring herself closer the woman who’s stolen her heart.

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