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Japanese Gothic

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What to expect

Kylie Lee Baker returns with another addictive, gory, horror PHENOMENON


'A blood-soaked, masterful blend of horror and mystery' GUARDIAN
'Blood-slicked, unsettling and immersive' DAILY MAIL
'A lush, unnerving ghost story' NEW YORK TIMES
'Brilliantly inventive. A must read - I couldn't turn the pages fast enough' MONIKA KIM
'A haunted house horror with a samurai twist' IGN
'Audacious, surreal . . . An exquisite expression of human pain held tight across centuries' LEIGH RADFORD

2026
Lee can't remember exactly where he hid the body, but he can remember the blood. Hiding out at his father's centuries-old home in Japan, Lee knows something is wrong with him, and he knows it has something to do with his mother's disappearance almost a decade ago.

1877
A female samurai, Sen, stalks the borders of her home to protect her family from slaughter after the abolition of the samurai class. She's not sure how they'll ever survive, not without her father, who has returned from war with a different soul behind his eyes.

When Lee and Sen find one another through a door between their worlds, they're both looking for answers. But what they find in the creaking old house they share is beyond what either of them could imagine...

PRAISE FOR THE NEWEST VOICE IN HORROR:
'A profound reminder of the true horrors that lurk in the world' TORI BOVALINO
'A serial killer mystery and a heartbreaking portrayal of grief' KIRSTY LOGAN
'This book dug its claws into me and would not let go' LING LING HUANG
'Body horror and female rage fiction combine in a powerful novel that will leave you quaking' ALMA KATSU
'A poignant, searing portrait of the hostility and violence that plagued pandemic-era NYC' VERONICA G. HENRY

Critics Review

Brilliantly inventive, sending a prickle down your spine as you struggle to distinguish between reality and delusion. A must read - I couldn't turn the pages fast enough!
MONIKA KIM
Audacious, surreal and doggedly elusive, an elegantly mind-boggling twist on the haunted house oeuvre . . . Kylie Lee Baker blends visceral feats of bloody gore with dizzying poetry, leaving the reader as uncertain as Sen and Lee are, compelled by the power of place to stay in the house until revelation comes. An exquisite expression of human pain held tight across the centuries.
LEIGH RADFORD
An utterly gorgeous tale of lost souls and bad fathers, Japanese Gothic is brilliant and haunting. Baker controls even her most ethereal threads with the confidence of an orchestra conductor, making every note ring true. I loved it!
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN
A heady puzzle box of story - the ones we are told and the ones we tell ourselves to survive. Intricate, sensuous, and haunting, the strange truth at the center of two shared mysteries unfurls in fragile, mesmerizing layers. Utterly sublime
OLIVIE BLAKE
East meets West in this blood-slicked, unsettling and immersive tale of a double haunting...
Daily Mail
Japanese Gothic is many things: A haunting. A mystery. A ghost story. A fairy tale. A love story. Above all, it's a compelling and heartbreaking piece of art about how parental expectations can damage us, and how love can, if not quite heal us, at least set us free
JOHANNA VAN VEEN
A mesmerizing, beautifully crafted story that breathes new life into the haunted house genre. Ghosts dwell between every page
MARCUS KLIEWER
An eerie and unrelenting tale of two lives, two time periods, and one singular horror soaked in blood and sorrow
CHUCK WENDIG
An astounding tapestry of blood, time, history, and guilt: Japanese Gothic is bold and ambitious and executed with a master's touch. Pick this up.
ANDREW JOSEPH WHITE
Intriguing, disturbing and beautifully constructed - everything I look for in a literary horror. I couldn't put Japanese Gothic down
RACHELLE ATALLA
This book is a complete mindf*ck and I loved every minute of it
MIA BALLARD
A breathless collision of timelines, cultures, and destinies in this impressive horror outing... In wrenching prose, Baker renders her characters both deeply flawed and profoundly human... It's as gruesome as it is un-put-downable
Publishers Weekly
A spectacular, thought-provoking, and chilling story . . . For fans of disorienting, heartbreakingly beautiful nightmares
Library Journal
Atmospheric and disorienting, Baker's ambitious follow-up to Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng blends historical horror with Japanese folklore, incorporating elements from the legend of Urashima Tarō to deliver a violent and thought-provoking tale of grief, generational trauma, and colonialism
Booklist
So deliciously written, you'll be immediately engrossed
Reactor
Japanese Gothic is a rare gem of a time-slip novel, in which an NYU student hiding a terrible secret from his father crosses paths with an 1870s female samurai-raised by her own father's inflexible code-in a deliciously appealing and ancient house. Kylie Lee Baker effortlessly takes in Japanese mythology, puts her own spin on history, and weaves it all together into an incredibly tense, bloody finale. Following on from the enormous success of Bat Eater, this is, once again, an absolutely marvellous and inventive book
ALLY WILKES
Author Kylie Lee Baker
Narrator Natalie Naudus
Duration 10 hours and 20 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781399755252
Format Audiobook
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Genre Contemporary horror and ghost stories, Dark fantasy, Historical fantasy, Horror and supernatural fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

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