Coles, Donyae

This gothic novel will have listeners on tenterhooks, wondering if Orabella is losing her grip on reality or if she really is trapped in a living nightmare.

Coles’s novel is another stellar example of how marginalized voices are taking a perennially popular genre, previously dominated by white characters and authors, and revitalizing it for 21st-century readers in a manner that honors its history but injects brand-new terrors, similar to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.