BLACK FLAME, by Gretchen Felker-Martin

The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

Horror is always about what we fear most, and this novella zeroes in on true horrors — conversion therapy, bigotry, fascism, and the 1980s. Compared to those, the cursed film that murders people seems relatively benign. It’s also a book about history, transition, and horrible, horrible families. I liked it a lot.