Cleveland State University and now daydreams about having the time and resources to go back to school to study history and mythology instead. She lives in a house that has more shadows than working lights. She loves reading sci fi, fantasy, and horror, but will read really anything that catches her eye (her favorite book is none of those genres — it’s The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien).
Dotson is primarily a writer of novels and short stories, and occasionally flash fiction. Her new supernatural horror novel is The Cut.
At CrimeReads Dotson tagged five books featuring decaying settings, including:
The Needfire by MK HardyRead about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
Norah Mackenzie needs a fresh start, and thinks she’s found it (as well as the solution to certain financial problems) in her engagement to a wealthy man in another part of Scotland. The letters they’ve exchanged have left her hopeful thatthis new chapter in her life will be a good one, but when Norah arrives at her husband-to-be’s home, Corrain House, nothing is quite as she expected. The surrounding village strikes her as strange, with unfamiliar customs. Corrain House itself sits precariously on a cliff edge, and is in ill-repair. Her husband rushes their wedding and then withdraws, giving Norah no indication that their previous correspondences meant anything to him. And the housekeeper is at once forbidding and alluring.
This is a beautiful addition to classic gothic literature with a modern touch. Putting this one down felt like coming up for air and rediscovering the world I actually live in, as opposed to the dark and crumbling Scottish estate. MK Hardy, the pen name for the duo who wrote this novel together, created a deeply compelling, incredibly engaging world populated by people who feel real even in the increasingly unreal circumstances surrounding them. This book comes out on July 31st, 2025 and I cannot recommend it enough.
--Marshal Zeringue
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