I am probably requesting the Innsmouth Legacy books! Lovecraft mythos, about one of his near-human monsters trying to get her life back together after her culture was destroyed and her family left to die in an internment camp circa WWII. I loved the first book, and the second book just came out. They've got this melancholy feel to them that I really love.
For other books featuring one or more of those things: - Left Hand of Darkness is half a wilderness survival tale about trekking across an ice field, and there is not enough (or possibly any?) shippy fix-it fic for it. No horror or women, though.
- The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon is about several generations of women guarding a secret on their property in rural Maine, and it's one of those stories where the reveal is even more horrifying than the buildup. I rec with caution, because the treatment of the Native American side character is really fucking racist, but there's a lot of interesting post-book fic you could write that would avoid dealing with her, and I found everything else about the worldbuilding and horror elements really satisfying.
- The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson are both psychological horror novels about women in geographically isolated circumstances with opportunities for femslash, if you're into that. Incestuous femslash, in the latter case.
- The Lie Tree and Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge are both YA historical horror/dark fantasy about female characters, with the kind of low-grade spookiness you'd expect from Neil Gaiman, but stronger conflict and characterization.
Re: Rec me a canon - books
I am probably requesting the Innsmouth Legacy books! Lovecraft mythos, about one of his near-human monsters trying to get her life back together after her culture was destroyed and her family left to die in an internment camp circa WWII. I loved the first book, and the second book just came out. They've got this melancholy feel to them that I really love.
For other books featuring one or more of those things:
- Left Hand of Darkness is half a wilderness survival tale about trekking across an ice field, and there is not enough (or possibly any?) shippy fix-it fic for it. No horror or women, though.
- The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon is about several generations of women guarding a secret on their property in rural Maine, and it's one of those stories where the reveal is even more horrifying than the buildup. I rec with caution, because the treatment of the Native American side character is really fucking racist, but there's a lot of interesting post-book fic you could write that would avoid dealing with her, and I found everything else about the worldbuilding and horror elements really satisfying.
- The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson are both psychological horror novels about women in geographically isolated circumstances with opportunities for femslash, if you're into that. Incestuous femslash, in the latter case.
- The Lie Tree and Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge are both YA historical horror/dark fantasy about female characters, with the kind of low-grade spookiness you'd expect from Neil Gaiman, but stronger conflict and characterization.