The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own

by Gwendolyn Kiste

Celebrated author Gwendolyn Kiste cordially invites you to explore The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. Enter a world possessed by recriminations from bygone eras, where the regrets and malice of years past still reverberate and shape our doom. Here, morally complex women and queer antiheroines swim against the current of a social structure that serves as a spectral prison in these layered stories of the weird and the Other.

Known for crafting bold metafictional narratives that grapple with challenging social issues, Kiste’s unwavering voice deftly weaves a siren’s song of resilience and survival. Included among the short stories in this collection are the Bram Stoker Award-winning “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt From Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” “The Girls From the Horror Movie,” “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair,” and other riveting new gothic tales of body horror, the supernatural, and unapologetic resistance.

“What’s going on inside you?” I ask, but the darkness never whispers back.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Gothic, Feminism, Adult, Queer

164 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 14, 2026

About the author

Gwendolyn Kiste is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, The Haunting of Velkwood, Boneset & Feathers, and Pretty Marys All in a Row, among others. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor Nightfire, Titan Books, and The Dark. She's a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Shirley Jackson, Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon awards.

Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com

Reviews

[megs_bookrack · Rating 4 out of 5]

'You know my name. You know my face. I'm the girl in the picture. The girl who never gets to stop smiling, never gets to rest, no matter how hard I try, no matter how loud I scream.'

🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is a gripping and thought-provoking Feminist Horror Short Story collection from Bram Stoker Award winning author, Gwendolyn Kiste.

This collection includes 16-diverse stories that are all sure to capture and hold your attention. I loved the variety among the stories, but really appreciated the common themes explored throughout. The Feminist vibes made the collection feel very cohesive.

Some of the standout stories for me include, The Sea Witch of the World's Fair, The Last Video Store on the Left, Sister Glitter Blood, The Mad Monk of Motor City, Best Friends Forever, and the story that gave the collection its name, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own, which was my favorite.



Another aspect I was surprised by, but I thought was very interesting was the number of historical figures that popped up amongst these stories. Individuals like Rasputin and Mary Shelley, I didn't expect that here and I liked how those figures were used to tell the stories.

In this collection, Kiste was really able to display the range of her writing and it's clear she's not afraid to explore difficult topics. It was almost like a mental exercise, going in and out amongst the stories, jumping around in space and time. I loved that.

I would absolutely recommend this to any Readers of Horror Short Fiction, particularly if you enjoy stories exploring things like systemic gender inequalities, body autonomy and female rage, to name a few.



Thank you to the publisher, Raw Dog Screaming Press, for providing me with a copy to read and review.

I certainly would be surprised if I see this listed on the 2026 Bram Stoker Awards Final Ballot!

[Becky Spratford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review in the April 2026 issue of Booklist and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2026/04...

Three Words That Describe This Book: Weird, Beautiful, Terrifying

I have been reading Kiste since her very first book The Rust Maidens and I have loved every thing she has written since. This collection is no exception.

Her main themes are always the women on the margins, forgotten women, the ones the rest fo the world doesn't notice. People overlook them, but they shouldn't. Sometimes they are the monster, sometimes they are the one who is able to defeat or get revenge on the monster (those are my favorites).

Her prose is always beautiful without being difficult to read. The cadence of her narrators is east to fall into. Here in the 16 stories -- 13 of which were previously published across the horror landscape-- every narrator directly connects with the reader-- speaks directly to them, even when not first person.

A few of these stories are with a second person narration such as the story of 2 sisters across their life hidden in the rules of a haunted house game "Sister Glitter Blood" or in the annotations of a booklet for a cult female film makers retrospective "The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford." Both are very sinister stories. But even with that more detached narration-- readers are drawn in immediately.

And that is a huge feature of every story-- the reader is a participant. No matter ow short or long the story is the exact correct length for that story. Readers are invested immediately, which means they feel the unease, dread, fear, terror, whatever the preferred emotion Kiste wants to wring out from that story, you as a reader are there. It is really quite remarkable.

The characters here are women-- almost exclusively. The men who appear are in the background or mentioned by physically absent. One story-- "In the Belly of the Wolf" centers around a young man, but he is not a hero.

The Bram Stoker Award winning story "The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary)" is stellar and I am so glad more readers will be able to find it. If you enjoyed RELUCTANT IMMORTALS you have to read this story. It is a Dracula retelling from one of the forgotten side characters pov, but it can be enjoyed without knowing that. It is a story about the violence done to all women always and at all times in history but in Kiste's hands-- the women get revenge on the monsters.

And this is for every story.

Some standouts to me (besides those already mentioned)-- but they are all good:

The Sea Witch at the Worlds Fair-- a sea monster comes on shore as a woman and makes a best friend. This one is full of atmosphere.

Her Skin a Grim Canvas-- a young woman is a male fashion designers newest muse. SO GOOD! It is visceral and magical but also terrifying body horror. And there is revenge. For fans of The Rust Maidens for sure.

Ides-- yes it is type of Ides of march story but not like you would expect. Apocalyptic and a woman has to kill another woman every single year on the Ides of March. I do not want to say more but it is not what you think. This might be the best story to describe everything in this collection-- unsettling at first but moving to terrifying, thought provoking, original, beautiful and horrible, a story that will stay with you long after you finish it.

The Mad Monk of Motor City-- A Rasputin retelling -- again I a way you would never expect.

Best Friends Forever is new to this collection and is a great toxic girl friendship story.

Kiste's work in any format is the standard for the weird, terrifying, feminist horror. She won the Bram Stoker Award for The Haunting of Velkwood last year beating Tremblay, Malerman, SGJ, and Iglesias. She is the foundation that you can use to send readers to authors like Hailey Piper, Cassandra Khaw, and Rachel Eve Moulton.

[Micah Castle]

Thanks to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for an eARC.

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own was another wonderful collection from Gwendolyn Kiste. Each story was haunting and disquieting, some Weider than others, but every one was as enjoyable as the last.

My favorite stories were: "A New Mother's Guide To Raising an Abomination," "The Sea Witch of the World's Fair," "Her Skin a Grim Canvas," "Ides," "The Mad Monk of Motor City," "The Eleven Films of of Oona Cashford," and "The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own."

[N.J. Gallegos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this ARC from Netgalley.

I've read Kiste's "Reluctant Immortals" as well as several short stories is various anthologies and always enjoyed her style. After reading "The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own", she's gained a fan for life. Her prose is lyrical, beautiful, and heart-wrenching. The stories range from gut punches to palate cleansers. A few stories stood out to me. "Her Skin a Grim Canvas" is fashion body horror and culminates in the model's revenge. A nice commentary on how far someone will go for fame, adoration, even mutilating themselves for the craft. "The Last Video Store on the Left" is a nice queer haunted video rental store tale with a nice ending. "Ides" follows a doomsday cult of women (I love a good cult, especially woman-led), and "Best Friends Forever" features the complicated relationships of toxic frenemies.

Kiste writes feminist horror through a queer lens and damn; do I like it!

[Jessica Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this and immediately wanted a copy. I've been a fan of Kiste's work for a few years now and love her voice. Even when I'm in a reading slump, I can read something she's written. The words draw you in and take you for a ride.

This collection of short stories is excellent to read in the in-between times. You can devour one chunk at a time without picking up and putting down the book. I appreciated the variety and the female-driven narratives.

I think my favorite story might have been The Sea Witch at The World's Fair. I too try to be the kind of girl who doesn't devour the world.

The Eight People Who Murdered Me was a close second favorite.

If you love Kiste, pick this up. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwendolyn Kiste's The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own offers the sort of creepy-but-not-terrifying short stories I enjoy. She has exactly the sort of dark imagination that I find compelling. I used this book as my bedtime reading for several nights running, and it was a great way to pull myself out of the day-to-day and begin to let sleep catch up with me. If you like not-excessively-bloody horror fiction, you're in for a treat with this title.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[Audra Israk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

When I read anthology or collections I like to rate every story and use the average to get my rating. Below are my ratings:

A New Mothers Guide to Raising an Abomination:4
The Girls from the horror Movie: 2
The sea witch of the world fair: 4
The Eight People Who Murdered Me: 4
Melting Point: 4
Her Skin a Grim Canvas: 3.5
The Last Video Store on the Left: 3.5
Ides: 2 (just couldn’t get into it)
In the Belly of the Wolf: 3
Sister Glitter Blood:4
The Mad Monk of the Motor City: 3
Best Friends Forever: 4
The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford:4
All the Hippies are Dying: 3
Lost in Darkness and Distance: 2
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own: 3.5

The average is around a 3.3.

Overall, there were a lot of the stories that I liked. They were weird and creepy and everything I love in a short story. But there were a couple that I felt like just missed the mark for me. They were all well written, I simply wouldn’t get into them. I would find myself struggling to pick up the book in some places and I hated that.

[Jaime Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology absolutely got under my skin. I had literal goosebumps at times and finished this book thoroughly creeped out.

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is a unique collection of stories where every single tale lingers. Each one starts off with a creeping unease and slowly twists until you realize the horror was never what you thought it was. The “normal” is what’s unsettling and the monsters are the ones you end up rooting for.

Kiste has such a sharp, immersive writing style. It feels impossible how much she fits into just a few pages at a time. Every story felt complete, fully realized, and haunting. I felt like I'd stepped into 16 different worlds and left each one just a little more unsettled than before.

The vibes sat perfectly between American Horror Story and The Twilight Zone with a distinctly serrated edge, leaning fully into body horror, feminine rage, and the enticing question of who the real monster is. This collection blurs that line seamlessly. Women facing monsters, becoming monsters, defeating monsters—and sometimes all three at once. There’s a cathartic, almost poetic sense of justice running through these stories that makes the horror feel purposeful instead of just shocking.

It’s eerie, unnerving, and viscerally sticks with you long after you’ve finished.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Favorite Stories:
- The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford
- The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own
- The Sea Witch of the World's Fair
- The Eight People Who Murdered Me

Favorite Quotes:
"You’ve seen my face before. Late-night on your television screen, maybe even in your nightmares afterward. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m the cute kid that everybody hopes will survive… I’m the tiny monster who keeps the others from making it that far."

"These men thought they understood the word. They thought they knew sin. But they hadn’t met me yet."

"There's no way to be sure what to do when the people in power are just keeping quiet. That's the thing about silence: it's the worst kind of lie because it doesn't seem like a lie at all."

"Because men are allowed to be visionaries. Women are barely allowed in the door."

"[T]hey only give a damn if the truth doesn't inconvenience them too much. And let's face it: truth is rarely as convenient as silence... It's strange how quickly the silence gives way to screams."

"It isn't fair what the world expects of women, how they must stitch themselves back together on the inside to keep from coming apart, to dam up the sorrow that would drown the whole universe if they let it."

"Because honestly, can you ever honor the dead, ever really do them justice? Or is everybody just a story to sell?"

"Remember: you're the monster. We all are. but not her. She's something different now. Something fragile as porcelain yet stronger than infinity."

[Suz Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This stellar collection includes sixteen stories. Thirteen are reprints which were originally published in anthologies and magazines such as Nightmare and Cosmic Horror Monthly. The stories feature 3-D characters, unsettling settings that live and breathe, complex relationships, and plenty of heart, whether haunted, hurting, or pumping out buckets of oxygenated blood. Readers are always in good hands with this multiple award winning author.

The collection includes the following stories:

“A New Mother’s Guide to Raising an Abomination” is loaded with more disturbing details than onesies on a baby shower registry.

In “The Girls from the Horror Movie,” An actress is haunted by a role she and her sister shared as a child.

“The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair” explores friendship, identity, and men who abuse their authority.

“The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)” provides fresh insight on Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.

In “Melting Point,” two domestic violence survivors navigate the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accidental partial nuclear reactor meltdown.

The opportunity to be a model and a muse for a visionary fashion designer turns out to be too good to be true in “Her Skin a Grim Canvas.”

A reporter shakes up the world of the proprietor of “The Last Video Store on the Left.”

When a doomsday cult comes together to murder their leader in “Ides,” the members suffer terrible consequences. The assassination of Julius Ceasar on the Ides of March serves as the inspiration for the story.

“In the Belly of the Wolf” focuses on the steep costs of a bloody betrayal.

“Sister Glitter Blood” features a glittery and gruesome board game which is “…thrilled to guide you through our sparkly little corner of hell.”

In Detroit, Rasputin’s ghost, “The Mad Monk of MotorCity,” haunts an apartment building mostly inhabited by widows.

“Best Friends Forever” shows a long-term friendship turn murderous.

“The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford” tells the story of an eccentric horror filmmaker via a retrospective film festival booklet which describes each of Oona’s films, her relationship with her beloved actress collaborator, and the uncanny things that happen when Oona’s film ran showing.

In “All the Hippies are Dying,” a daughter honors her Woodstock-obsessed mother’s funeral wishes.

“Lost in Darkness and Distance” follows a beheaded and undead Marie Antoinette as she meets a group of famous writers.

In “The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own,” the ghost of a famously murdered woman haunts various Los Angeles locales.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Raw Dog Screaming Press for providing an Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Lilibet Bombshell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let’s face it, there wasn’t much of a question that I wasn’t going to love this collection or not rate it five stars. Not only is Gwendolyn Kiste one of my auto-buy authors, but she’s also one of the most accomplished modern-day authors when it comes to tales of all things haunted.

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is Kiste in her native environment: concentrated tales of hauntings, one after another, and each one is a gem. Most tales feature strangers and stories new to us. We get a visit from Lucy Westerna, a character I’ll never turn down reading about. Trying to rank the stories or single them out is a mostly fruitless endeavor, because they all slap. If you’ve never read Kiste, this is a great place to start, because it’s 158 pages of easily digestible hauntings. Just don’t read it after dark. 5⭐️


I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fourteen Ways Out of the Same Room
BWAF RECOMMENDED READ
BWAF Score: 7/10

TL;DR: The best stories here, and there are several, build their dread from domestic arrangements rather than monsters, and the dread is the right kind: specific, accumulated, and cold. Kiste is as good as contemporary horror gets when the argument and the atmosphere are the same thing. Here, often, they are.

Gwendolyn Kiste has a theory about haunted houses, which is that they are not houses. They are marriages, they are bodies, they are the beauty industry, they are wherever women have been put and kept. The supernatural in her telling is what happens when the social refuses to be borne any longer. The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own collects fourteen stories organized around this thesis, and the thesis is correct, and for most of the book it produces some of the finest feminist horror writing this reviewer has encountered in a good while.

The strongest entry is “Melting Point,” which sets a suppressed desire for the woman next door against the Three Mile Island meltdown of 1979. The neighbor, Rose, begins to dissolve into something stranger than radiation damage, the gaps in her skin filling with constellations and the possibility of other universes. This is body horror and love story and domestic elegy at once, and Kiste moves between all three without sentimentalizing any of them. The dread here arrives not from monsters but from a truck in the driveway and a mother in the recliner and years of choosing the safe and suffocating thing. What she accomplishes with the ending of the story is harder than it seems and represents the thing Kiste does better than almost anyone working in this mode right now.

“The Eight People Who Murdered Me,” presented as an excerpt from Lucy Westenra‘s diary, does something almost as good. Lucy accounts, in numbered sections, for everyone who contributed to her death: the vampire, her mother, her best friend, the out-of-town doctor who transfuses strange men’s blood into her body without consent or explanation. The genius of it is structural. Lucy insists she would never have blamed herself for what wasn’t her fault, and then details at some length all the things she would never have blamed herself for, and the gap between what she says and what we hear is narrow and precise, like the space between a wall and its paper, and it is exactly where the story lives. The anger in it is cold, which is the right temperature. It won a Bram Stoker Award and the award was not wrong.

“Her Skin a Grim Canvas” has a fashion designer who sews his aesthetic vision directly into his muses’ flesh, embedding roses without removing the thorns, threading silk through muscle. It should be too much. Kiste’s flat and factual prose holds it together. The story understands that the designer is not the point; he is where a system becomes visible, an instrument that the wealthy collectors who buy his blood-crusted garments knew about all along. The body horror and the social commentary are not two different things in this story. They are the same fucking thing, which is the only way this kind of horror actually works.

“The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford,” formatted as a film festival retrospective booklet for a fictional female filmmaker whose movies literally absorb their audiences, is the collection’s most inventive piece and one of its most mordant. It is a meditation on how women visionaries are made to disappear by the culture even as, or especially as, they are declared legends. The horror in it is the horror of being told you are brilliant while you vanish.

Kiste is a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner and a Lambda Literary Award winner, the author of several novels including The Rust Maidens and The Haunting of Velkwood, in which she has been developing these same preoccupations at greater length. She lives outside Pittsburgh on an abandoned horse farm, a detail she has mentioned often enough that it has become something like a brand, but which happens to be true and explains something about her work: the combination of pastoral and decrepit, of beautiful and barely habitable, of staying somewhere nobody quite expected her to stay. Her short fiction here is mostly previously published, assembled from outlets including Nightmare Magazine and Tor Nightfire, and the collection has the coherence of a sustained argument rather than a miscellany.

That coherence is also where the problem lives. Every story in The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is, at its core, the same story: a woman is contained, and then something monstrous happens, and then she escapes or transforms or takes her revenge, and then it ends on a note of triumph or of irresolution that is also a kind of triumph. By the time you reach “Ides,” a cult story with a strange central situation, the woman who keeps murdering her beloved prophet and watching her beloved prophet resurrect, the formula has become legible enough that the story’s strangest passages feel like interruptions of what you already know is coming. There is a scene in “Ides” where Brystol and Julia sit together on the ground all night waiting for the apocalypse, their thighs touching, the sky churning overhead, and it is moving and odd and exactly the kind of scene Kiste can write beautifully. Then the apocalypse comes, more or less on schedule.

The deeper problem is that Kiste is always on the right side. She is so consistently on the right side that by the third or fourth story you stop wondering who will survive and start counting pages until they do. The most effective horror leaves you uncertain about what the darkness wants. Kiste’s darkness always wants the same thing, and when the darkness wants what you want too, it sits next to you like a reliable friend rather than something that could devour you.

“All the Hippies Are Dying” is the exception and very nearly the collection’s finest piece: a daughter’s account of her Woodstock-obsessed mother, whose cancer turns out to be playing Woodstock songs from inside her body. There is no supernatural menace here in the conventional sense. There is only the slow grief of caring for a person you are still afraid of, and the stranger grief of discovering that person becoming, near the end, someone you might have been able to love. It is warm, which is unusual for Kiste, and the warmth costs something rather than reassuring you. The story does not know it is supposed to earn the release it earns. That is why it earns it.

The title story, which closes the book, is a Black Dahlia meditation in second person that eventually turns on the reader and asks whether our fascination with murdered women is itself a form of violence. The question is fair. The story loses its nerve in the asking. By the time the narrator announces she is setting the reader free and walking into the California morning, we have been told how to feel about what just happened rather than made to feel it. Kiste, usually so controlled, explains the irony. That is the one thing she should never do, and it is the last thing we see.

Still: “Melting Point” alone is worth the price of admission, and there are three or four stories here that will stay longer than you expect. Kiste knows how to build dread from domestic architecture, how to make a husband’s truck in a driveway more frightening than anything with fangs. She knows that women’s bodies are haunted houses in ways that horror fiction has not often said plainly enough, and she says it plainly. The argument deserves to be made. Whether horror is the right place to make it, where argument and atmosphere are supposed to be indistinguishable from one another, is the question this collection leaves open when it should not.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out my review of The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own at The Dissection Table!

https://dissectiontable.substack.com/...

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: light body horror, spousal abuse, light gore


My rating is the average of how much I liked the short stories in this collection. See individual story reviews below.

A New Mother's Guide to Raising and Abomination ⭐⭐⭐⭐- Creepy and funny. Cryptidcore

The Girls from the Horror Movie ⭐⭐- too short, ending confusing. Playing off the little girls in The Shining

The Sea Witch of the World Fair ⭐⭐⭐- Fun and interesting take on a mermaid type horror story.

The Eight People who Murdered Me (excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary ⭐⭐⭐- I wanted to like this more than I did. It's not bad, it's a good retelling of Lucy's story and gives her back her agency.

Melting Point ⭐⭐⭐- Interesting concept, not particularly scary with a weird ending and queer romance.

I have to tell you by this point I was hoping it's get better, another 4 or even a 5

Her Skin a Grim Canvas ⭐ ⭐ ⭐.5- I did like this one, but I almost skipped it because the start was dull. Unique take on a serial killer story that reminded me a little of Butterfly Garden.

The Last Video Store on the Left ⭐ ⭐ ⭐.5 -
This one was a little spooky and very clever. But there was a part that didn't get explained which made the ending a tad confusing.

Ides ⭐ ⭐ ⭐.5- interesting gender bent paranormal retelling of the death of Julius Caesar

In the Belly of the Wolf ⭐ ⭐ - meh. Werewolf story, very short and very basic.

Sister Glitter Blood ⭐ ⭐ - a Jumanji like story. Had potential and some interesting bits but overall disappointing.

The Mad Monk of the Motor City ⭐ - I really disliked this one. The ghost is rasputin haunting a flophouse in Detroit makes no sense, and this story was sexually gross in a way that wasn't necessary.

Best Friends Forever ⭐ ⭐ - Did this author grow up poor in the slums or a dying small town with a horrible mother? Because a good chunk of these stories have this plot. This one was stupid, but written well.

The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ - This one was pretty great. In the style of a documentary about fake horror movies and a fake direction. Creepy and enjoyable.

All the Hippies are Dying ⭐ - dumb and the title says it all.

Lost in Darkness and Distance ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ - This one is great. Linking marie Antoinette with Mary Shelley. Quite unique.

The Haunted House She Calls her Own ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ - this one is about the black Dahlia and breaks the 4th wall. It wasn't bad

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Kiste since Reluctant Immortals, at which point I went back and started working through her backlist. Many of the short stories in The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own were published at some point, but I love that they were put into one collection as there were quite a few stories I know will be sticking with me.

One of my faves was Best Friends Forever, a story of when friendship goes wrong and stalker fantasies go right. It begins with, "On Wednesday morning, your best friend Alicia tries to kill you again. Fortunately you're expecting her. You're always expecting her."

Lost in Distance and Darkness was another favorite--a Marie Antoinette retelling, where she has returned from the dead. "Marie Antoinette tucks her head in a basket and disappears into the forest." The imagery here is one of the things I love so much about Kiste's writing. Her writing is raw and full of feeling but also so visceral. In this story Marie in her wanderings comes across Mary Shelley and her band of misfits and the relationship between Mary and Marie is so beautiful.

"'This is my fault,' Mary tells her monster. 'I've conjured you out of my nightmares.'
But Marie only shakes her head. 'Perhaps I've conjured you out of mine.'"

And as always Kiste addresses the angst and horror that can be derived from being a woman, and being a mother in stories like A New Mother's Guide to Raising an Abomination or The Sea Witch of the World's Fair. I also loved the stories centered around historical figures. There is a great story where Rasputin begins charming all the women in an apartment building and another told from the Black Dahlia's point of view. Again and again Kiste takes these interesting people or moments and turns them into a beautifully written story.

[Trevor Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclosure Statement: I received an advance copy of this collection from the author. My thoughts and opinions of it are entirely my own and have not been influenced by either the author or the publisher in any way.

Gwendolyn Kiste is writing some of the best short fiction in horror. Whether it be because of her immaculate voice in short fiction, the political clarity of her stories, or the way she explores pop culture staples for new and resistive readings, she's doing incredible work for horror. The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own collects some of her most powerful stories in recent years, centered clearly on the experience of women.

And her stories are powerfully reflective of the way in which our society marginalizes women, and certainly queer women, and how these stories contain the seed of their destruction and also the path of their resistance. Because the thing about any of Kiste's stories is that every story is a story about coming back into one's own power and agency; each story flashes teeth and tears at the fetters binding women to the familiar fates of historic literature. These stories of resistance, one after another, present a whole thesis statement about pushing back, about leaving behind what doesn't suit us, and about seizing authority over one's own circumstances at all costs--costs paid in blood and rage, in love and adoration, sometimes laden with longing but seldom real regret.

Story after story, this collection reminds me of just how fucking good Kiste's work is, how clear-throated she is when presenting her criticisms and advocacy, and how desperately good it is to have a writer like her building new roads for writers and readers to follow.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste #fortysecondbookof2026 #arc #horror #thehauntedhousesshecallsherown #shortstorycollection

CW: body horror, death, murder, violence, assault, vampirism, cults, werewolves, beheading

From NetGalley: Celebrated author Gwendolyn Kiste cordially invites you to explore The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. Enter a world possessed by recriminations from bygone eras, where the regrets and malice of years past still reverberate and shape our doom. Here, morally complex women and queer antiheroines swim against the current of a social structure that serves as a spectral prison in these layered stories of the weird and the Other. Known for crafting bold metafictional narratives that grapple with challenging social issues, Kiste’s unwavering voice deftly weaves a siren’s song of resilience and survival. Included among the short stories in this collection are the Bram Stoker Award-winning “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt From Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” “The Girls From the Horror Movie,” “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair,” and other riveting new gothic tales of body horror, the supernatural, and unapologetic resistance.

My thoughts: This was an entertaining and enjoyable collection of short stories. I could read entire novels based on several of them. I especially enjoyed The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair, Melting Point, and Lost in Darkness and Distance. The last one has a very similar premise to a book I recently reviewed but is different enough that I still enjoyed it. Highly recommend this collection.

Thank you to @rdspress and @netgalley for the advance copy. (Available now, pub date was 4/14/26)

[Vanna Book-Mage · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Haunted House She Calls Her Own is a collection of character-driven short stories that encompass the weird, supernatural, psychological and strange. The tone of the collection is set immediately from the first story and the reader is transported into an atmospheric world of eerie and unexplained occurrences that border the line of unsettling and disturbing. This is further developed as the stories progress and the reader is ensconced in an unsettling psychological thread of queer anti-heroines, morally grey characters, hauntings, monsters and ghosts.

The stories are mostly written in the first and second person voices which make the reader feel immersed in the plot alongside the characters in a way that engages the senses and causes an immediacy to the feel of the horrifying tales. There is a flow to the collection even though the stories do not need to be read in order; they have underlying themes of otherness, queerness, the patriarchy as systemically monstrous, the horror of societal expectations, and normalcy as terrifying.

While subtle and nuanced the author’s use of imagery is rich and unflinching, like the descriptions are grappling to be more than seen, but also felt. Overall, this was a rich and terrifying plunge into a short-story horror collection that is atmospherically gothic and haunting in the best ways.

Favourite story standouts: “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair” & “Ides”

Thanks NetGalley and RDS Publishing for this free arc/copy of The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own; all opinions are my own and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Candi Norwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like the narrator in “Her Skin Was a Grim Canvas” could not merely wear clothes, there is no such thing as merely reading a Gwendolyn Kiste work. The stories in The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own have to be savored, lived in, passages - and even whole stories - read again to relive the language or extract more meaning or wallow in the emotion - be it fear, horror, dread, grief, humor - on the dark side, of course.

Kiste’s stories are about mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, lovers and what the world does to these women (sometimes with their intersectional queer experiences), very literally in some stories like the aforementioned “Her Skin Was a Grim Canvas” in which the narrator accuses the rich of wanting “to possess the broken pieces of me” or tongue-in-cheek like the introductory story “A New Mother’s Guide to Raising an Abomination” in which the infant flies, oozes decay, and grows at an astronomical rate - which barely feels like an exaggeration if you’ve ever known a baby.

In an overall strong collection, besides those mentioned, highlights for me are the “good for her” plot in “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair”, whose main character is “a sea creature pretending to be a human pretending to be a sea creature,” and the cursed films and the lives of those in “The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford,” but I am sure to revisit all the stories.

NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press provided an advance copy for my honest review.

[Steve Edholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Haunted House She Calls Her Own is a great collection of dark and unsettling stories. I took my time reading this collection and I am really glad I did. Some stories are still not sitting well with me.

This thing opens up with a banger of a story called A New Mother’s Guide to Raising An Abomination which paints a very brutal picture of childbirth and caring/raising for something that isn’t human. This is a gory nightmare of a story. Some of the other standout stories include:
The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford which is a great take on the haunted movie trope and a filmmaker’s decent into art
The Last Video Store On The Left which reminds me of the Blockbuster video in Bend, OR, but the owner has a dark past and something maybe lurking in the shadows
Her Skin a Grim Canvas, a body horror story involving a semi-underground fashion designer and his model (this one will stay with you)
The Sea Witch of the World's Fair about a mermaid at the World’s Fair who is hungry
And while I can’t recall the name, a story of Marie Antoinette’s rise from the grave only to stumble upon the infamous night of Mary Shelley’s telling of Frankenstein

This collection is well worth the read if you like Kiste and want a wide range of stories and tropes.

Thanks to NetGalley for the early copy for this review!

[Caitlin Teaches · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own feels like a meditation in so many of the ways women find refuge in horror. The very bloodiness acts as a gateway to validate and explore very really pain and fear women experience with a deft and interesting hand. Kiste plays with literary references, history, pop culture, and even fairy tales in stories rich with horror and weirdness. The collection is surprisingly cohesive in part because Kiste has a gift for writing about the relationships between women and showing off their complicated diversity. The end result is a fascinating short story collection that contains:

"The Last Video Store on the Left," "The Girls From The Horror Movie," and "The Eleven Films of of Oona Cashford" are three very different explorations of disappearing into a story. "Ides" explores the inevitably of loss and change while playing with historical and literary references set in an apocalyptic cult. If you love a 'good for her' story, there are a few options to pick from that all manage to avoid the pitfalls of playing to cheap or easy wins. There other are beautiful explorations of monstrosity and the way it can become armor or relief, and "A New Mother's Guide To Raising an Abomination" somehow finds something delicate and sweet in its bloody resolution.


Thank you to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for the arc of this book.

[Missy (myweereads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"They say you have to suffer for your art. So that's exactly what I'll do."

Gwendolyn Kiste's new collection of short stories centre around character driven tales. Some of these span many decades but each tell a similar tale where the message is loud and clear.

Featured are:

A New Mother's Guide to Raising an Abomination
The Girls from the Horror Movie
The Sea Witch of the World's Fair
The Eight People Who Murdered Me
Melting Point
Her Skin a Grim Canvas
The Last Video Store on the Left
Ides
In the Belly of the Wolf
Sister Glitter Blood
The Mad Monk of the Motor City
Best Friend's Forever
The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford
All the Hippies Are Dying
Lost in Darkness and Distance
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own

I was first introduced to this author's works from the novel "The Haunting of Velkwood". I enjoyed how beautiful yet harrowing way in which the author wrote that book. With this collection she does exactly that making them all the more memorable. For that reason a lot of these really stuck with me. These range from the supernatural to psychological and body horror.

This was a good collection and one that would be great for any new readers of this author.

Many thanks to @rdspress for the copy.

[Alison Faichney · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first work by Kiste! Gwendolyn Kiste is one of those authors who’s been hovering on my periphery for quite a while, so I was quick to pick up this collection. Most of these stories have been previously published in anthologies and other works, but it was a fantastic intro to Kiste. Her stories all seem to revolve around women, often vulnerable ones, and the “good for her” sentiment runs deep in many of these, which is always a vibe for me. There’s also a good bit of range with her work but I think body horror is definitely her niche for creepiness. These are all pretty dark but the weirdness is dialed up in many of these tales.

I enjoyed most of them but my favorites were: “A New Mother’s Guide to Raising an Abomination”, “Her Skin a Grim Canvas”, “The Last Video Store on the Left”, “Best Friends Forever”, “The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford” “All the Hippies are Dying”, and “Lost in Distance and Dark.” If you’re looking for a new author to turn to for feminine rage (of which there can never be too many) then definitely give this collection a try. I loved the commentary on many of these and definitely will be reading more from Kiste in the future.

[ScarlettAnomalyReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh this was perfection.

Every single one of these stories was from the female perspective. Seeing these stoties through a difference lens then you might have before these stories hit hard.

This is another one of those books that seems to hit extra hard right now during a time when all over feel like they have less of a voice, but remember you roar.

I don't want to spoil how it feels to read these so only talking about a few.

Her Skin a Grim Canvas was gruesome and in some ways made my skin crawl, it involves a fashion designer and his model. This one is a body horror, if that gives you an idea of a models revenge..

The Last Video Store On The Left, might be one of my favorite short stoties these year so far.
A cool haunted video store that just happens to be queer? But there's something lurking be it a monster or a past..
Anyways can I get a membership??


There isn't a weak story in this, much like the women in these stories they are strong and push back against the usual ideas of what women are, women are anything.

[Chelsea Carr Kinnear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its rare that I read a short story collection and enjoy each and every inclusion, but I loved this from start to finish.

I feel like these stories encompassed the concept of "good for her horror" where even though the characters are subjected to various challenges, they all show immense strength. Some by embracing their monstrous qualities and others by not giving up in impossible circumstances.

The stories were beautifully written and had the feel of dark fairy tales, but with empowering twists where the women persevere in the end. I feel like these stories will resonate with so many people.

Some standouts for me were The Sea Witch of the World's Fair, The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westerna's Diary), Her Skin a Grim Canvas and Lost in Darkness and Distance.

I had previously read The Haunting of Velkwood but will be seeking out the rest of Gwendolyn Kiste's work as well as re-visiting this collection in the future.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy!

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️thank you to Netgalley for the ARC. One of my favorite reads of 2025 was The Haunting of Velkwood, so I was very excited about this new release from Kiste. I don’t typically enjoy short story collections, but Kiste does a good job maintaining similar themes and messaging throughout the assorted tales, which makes it feel like a cohesive body of work. The horror ranges from spooky to downright upsetting, with an undercurrent of melancholy that is reminiscent of Velkwood. Great horror imagery that really sticks with you! They were a couple of stories that did not work for me early in the book, and one that felt truly out of place towards the end, but I enjoyed the vast majority of this book.

My favorites of the collection (in chronological order) are: The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair, Sister Glitter Blood, Ides, Best Friends Forever, The Eleven Films of Oona Cashford, and Lost in Darkness and Distance.

[Ruth Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed 'The Haunting of Velkwood' by Gwendolyn Kiste, but this short story collection was not for me.

Many of this short stories were written in the first person and utilized a 'you' address to the reader/another character. When done every once in a while, this can be effective. However, it happened in story after story, and I do not believe it was used successfully.

To me, this collection reminded me a lot of Tumblr fiction, which is not necessarily a bad thing--it's inventive and lyrical, but can teeter over the edge into juvenile or overwritten (which this does).

My favorite from the collection was 'Melting Point' and there are some other gems like 'The Sea Witch of the World's Fair.' It appears that many of these were previously published, and I think I would have enjoyed them as one-offs, but Kiste's excesses become clear when they're in a collection together.

Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley!

[Catriona Mowat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is a fierce and feminine collection.

With classic literature and historic characters, some of the stories are built on a solid foundation of legend, perverted and twisted to create utterly new stories which are modern and macabre. Wholly original yet familiar.

Every tale comes from a female perspective, colouring history and horror with a new lens that is strong, visceral, and poignant. From female rage and revenge, to friendships gone wrong, haunted houses, and even women trying to carve out a name for themselves, every woman will find a story to connect with here. The voices of women cry out from every page of this collection, and their stories are harrowing, comforting, and bloody in equal measure.

These stories will stay with you, your own personal ghosts: and maybe that’s the way it should be.

[Hannah Deverall · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Haunted House She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste is a collection of delightfully dark and challenging tales. From man-eating mermaids to tumours that vibrate to the tune of Jimi Hendrix's The Star Spangled Banner, this short story collection has it all. Normally with a work like this, there are a handful of pieces that just don't hit, and they pull down the entire collection. However, The Haunted House She Calls Her Own did not fall into this trope. While I definitely had my favourites and least favourites, none of them were flops in any way, shape or form.

I would recommend this book to all kinds of horror loves, but especially those that love queer horror and retellings of classic horror stories such as Dracula. Thank you to Raw Dog Screaming Press for providing The Haunted House She Calls Her Own for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark and unsettling short story collection featuring 16 horror stories all told from a woman's perspective. There really wasn't a bad one in the bunch, but these were my favorites:

• A New Mother's Guide to Raising an Abomination
• The Sea Witch of the World's Fair
• Her Skin a Grim Canvas
• The Last Video Store on the Left
• Best Friends Forever
• The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own

Kiste was able to incorporate historical figures into several of these tales which was unexpected, but also unique and interesting. I read it in a day, but it would also be easy to pick up and read a little at a time and still get your horror fix. This was my first time reading Kiste's work and I will certainly be looking for more in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for the ARC!

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars (rounded up to 5)
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste is an atmospheric and extremely creative short story collection. Gwendolyn has a way of writing characters that make you feel everything that they are; rage, longing, vulnerability. I have been a fan of her writing for several years, and this collection did not disappoint.

My favorite stories in the collection were The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own, but also loved The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair. These stories couldn’t have been any more different, but both were captivating.

This will be a book that I recommend often, and I can not wait to read Gwendolyn’s next novel: In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts. Expect a review of this one during the Summer.

Thank you to RDS Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC in return for my honest review.