A chance meeting on a windswept English moor sparks an obsessive—and soon deadly—love affair between two lonely young women in this clever inversion of the Gothic classics, with a fresh spin that could only come from the award-winning author of A Haunting on the Hill.
It's the 1920s and the English countryside is quiet—which suits Olivia and Tamsin, two young women happy to be overlooked by society. Their relationship is complicated: unruly, working-class Tamsin was brought to Kerrith Manor to be tutored at Olivia's side, but the two quickly have found something more than friendship—a bone-deep recognition that ignites an endless passion.
But an unexpected visitor and an unexplained death disrupt their idyll, sending both women on the run. They find harbor at Ledges, the dazzling estate of ruthlessly wealthy and mysterious Rex de Voil—and a favorite hang-out for the bohemian ‘bright young things’ eager to cut loose far from London’s prying eyes. Olivia and Tamsin revel in their newfound freedom…until they learn that nothing in Rex’s world is without cost.
Richly evoking a vibrant time in queer history, Unspeakable Things is a seductive historical thriller that explores the haunting bond between two women coming into their power even as it unspools their obsession to its deadly end.
‘Masterfully uses the gothic to explore the tumult of the ’20s, when queer culture was both tantalizing and scandalous.’ —BookPage
‘A dark delight.’ —Publishers Weekly
‘Propulsive and heart-stopping: a story about desire as a weapon.’ —Lisa Gabriele, author of The Winters
‘Evok[es] the period’s glamorous excesses and social dangers with atmospheric menace and knife-edged desire… [A] must-read.’ —Booklist (starred review)
Genre: Historical
It's the 1920s and the English countryside is quiet—which suits Olivia and Tamsin, two young women happy to be overlooked by society. Their relationship is complicated: unruly, working-class Tamsin was brought to Kerrith Manor to be tutored at Olivia's side, but the two quickly have found something more than friendship—a bone-deep recognition that ignites an endless passion.
But an unexpected visitor and an unexplained death disrupt their idyll, sending both women on the run. They find harbor at Ledges, the dazzling estate of ruthlessly wealthy and mysterious Rex de Voil—and a favorite hang-out for the bohemian ‘bright young things’ eager to cut loose far from London’s prying eyes. Olivia and Tamsin revel in their newfound freedom…until they learn that nothing in Rex’s world is without cost.
Richly evoking a vibrant time in queer history, Unspeakable Things is a seductive historical thriller that explores the haunting bond between two women coming into their power even as it unspools their obsession to its deadly end.
‘Masterfully uses the gothic to explore the tumult of the ’20s, when queer culture was both tantalizing and scandalous.’ —BookPage
‘A dark delight.’ —Publishers Weekly
‘Propulsive and heart-stopping: a story about desire as a weapon.’ —Lisa Gabriele, author of The Winters
‘Evok[es] the period’s glamorous excesses and social dangers with atmospheric menace and knife-edged desire… [A] must-read.’ —Booklist (starred review)
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"Elizabeth Hand takes the gothic novel - trembling heroines, foggy moors, rambling mansions, a powerful man who holds all the keys - and hands the weapons to the women instead. A sapphic folie a deux, set against a backdrop of postwar bohemian decadence and culminating in an epic ball where every mask hides another mask, Unspeakable Things is propulsive and heart-stopping: a story about desire as a weapon and gender as a game. Shirley Jackson's visceral dread meets Daphne du Maurier's dark, sexy twists. I rooted for Tamsin and Olivia while being a little terrified of them - and of the power of their attraction to each other, the kind of love that destroys everything in its path." - Lisa Gabriele
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