Anita Desai

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Hitomi Kanehara

Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors.

In this darkly addictive, devious novel, love is pain. 
 
Rin is flying back from her honeymoon. She's madly in love with her husband. The future looks rosy. 
 
Then he disappears to the bathroom and Rin imagines that he has gone to seduce the flight attendant. As her thoughts spiral out of control, the phrase 'madly in love' takes on a more sinister meaning. 
 
Prizewinning author Hitomi Kanehara follows Rin's life backwards from this moment, as a picture of the dark core and violent past of this disturbed young woman gradually comes into focus. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Autofiction

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The original feminist horror story, about a woman driven to the brink - and beyond. 
 
In the throes of a ‘temporary nervous depression’ following childbirth, a woman is brought by her physician husband to recuperate in an isolated New England mansion. 
 
There she is barred from her work of writing and encouraged to simply get better. Sequestered in the old nursery at the top of the house, with barred windows and a bed nailed to the floor, she has little to do but examine the strange wallpaper that surrounds her – and appears to shift before her very eyes. 
 
Here accompanied by Gilman’s key wider stories, The Yellow Wall-Paper endures as a groundbreaking, deeply disturbing classic of feminist horror. 
 
'A great work of literature, the product of a questing, burning intellect' Maggie O’Farrell 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Yellow Wall-Paper

Intan Paramaditha

In this dazzling debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, fairytale, taboo, lust and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix. 
 
A black velvet butterfly darts out of a cave. Menstrual blood pools in the backseat of a car. Rats pour forth from an open doorway. 
 
These stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Melding horror and myth, this is subversive feminist fiction at its finest, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Apple and Knife

Jewelle Gomez

In this radically reimagined vampire myth, the night hides many things... 
 
Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. 
 
Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men's clothing and seem to know others' innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to 'share the blood' and live forever. They name her Gilda. 
 
Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world. But can Gilda truly outrun the darkness of history and face a future where the lives of everyone she loves are at stake? 
 
'A groundbreaking work of Afrofuturism before the term was even coined' Guardian 
 
'A lush, exciting, inspiring read' Sarah Waters 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Gilda Stories

Ottessa Moshfegh

Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. 
 
While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. 
 
Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone, and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession: who was Magda and how did she meet her fate? 
 
From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen comes this razor-sharp, chilling and darkly hilarious novel about the stories we tell ourselves and how we strive to obscure the truth. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in. 
 
PRAISE FOR DEATH IN HER HANDS: 
 
'This is a story about what might happen when a woman takes charge' The Times 
'Routinely hailed as one of the most exciting young American authors working today' Guardian 
'A new kind of murder mystery' New Yorker 
'A fine line between shocking realism and the absurd' New Statesman 
'A brilliant off-kilter detective story' Evening Standard 
'A beautiful novel' Sunday Times 
'Dark, devious' Observer

Death in Her Hands

Yoko Ogawa

Three strange, tortuous stories from the shadow queen of contemporary Japanese fiction. 
 
A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities. 
 
A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion. 
 
Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the unsettling figure of the looming caretaker. 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Diving Pool

Audrey Niffenegger

A bad thing about dying is that I'm starting to feel as though I'm being erased. 
 
When Elspeth Noblin dies she leaves her beautiful flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina Poole, on the condition that their mother is never allowed to cross the threshold. But until the solicitor's letter falls through the door of their suburban American home, either Julia nor Valentina knew their aunt existed. 
 
The twins hope that in London their own, separate, lives can finally begin but they have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them and works in the cemetery itself. 
 
As the twins unravel the secrets of their aunt, who doesn't seem quite ready to leave her flat, even after death, Niffenegger weaves together a delicious and deadly ghost story about love, loss and identity. 
 
'A ghostly love story and a lovely ghost story' - Tatler 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Her Fearful Symmetry

Marjorie Bowen

A rediscovered gothic classic with a groundbreaking, gender-nonconforming protagonist at its heart. 
 
‘I do not sin,’ he smiled. ‘I am Sin’ 
 
In a quiet medieval city, alone in his shadowy chambers, Dirk Renswoude worships the devil. Then the wind brings the young scholar Theirry to his door. Could this beautiful man share his dark obsession? Under a hushed midnight sky, the pair swear themselves to the black arts, and to one another. 
 
Yet Dirk shies away at the slightest touch. He will not discuss his past. As the duo hex their way across moonlit woodlands and learned cities, it becomes clear that Dirk will stop at nothing to live the life he desires, while concealing one precious secret. 
 
'A subtle and complex thriller…Just don’t give away its secret' Washington Post 
 
READER LOVE - JOIN THE DARK SIDE: 
'Beware. This is dark gothic fiction at its best.' 
'A thick and oozing tale of every possible sin and horror...perfect for spooky season' 
'That twist!' 
'For fans of historical fiction, or horror, or fantasy, this novel should prove absolutely scrumptious.' 
'A super fun Gothic extravaganza.' 
'Demons! Spells! Satanic rituals! Love triangles! Ghosts and witches! Medieval opulence! Gruesome violence! THE ANTICHRIST! ...Flat-out, straight-up awesome.' 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Black Magic

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