Unspeakable Things - by Elizabeth Hand (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

"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)

Review Quotes

"A young woman learns the limits of passion in this tantalizing historical suspense novel. . . . The novel blooms into an intoxicating sapphic thriller replete with Daphne du Maurier-worthy descriptions of Cornwall and sharp observations about a pleasure-loving society in decline. It's a dark delight." --Publishers Weekly

"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 à 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, author of The Winters

"Hand pays homage to gothic literature and England's postwar, bohemian Bright Young Things social set, evoking the period's glamorous excesses and social dangers with atmospheric menace and knife-edged desire...Hand tops her masterful storytelling in A Haunting on the Hill with this must-read." --Booklist (starred review)

"Olivia's narration offers du Maurier-esque rewards through matchless descriptions of period attire, decor, and mores. . . . The plot gathers steam in the book's last hundred pages, by which point corpses are piling up, and Ledges assumes some of the mystique of Rebecca's Manderley. A slow-to-simmer but glimmering gothic pleasure." --Kirkus

"Hand's facility with language and atmosphere and use of short, propulsive chapters work their own dark magic on the reader. It's a compelling and frightening novel, but did it need to take place in Jackson's universe? Probably not -- and that's why it works...In a landscape of soulless franchises geared toward quick, shallow hits of fan service, she has the maturity and talent to deliver the follow-up that Jackson's novel deserves ... Like Jackson, Hand offers no explanation for Hill House's malevolence, preserving the original novel's power and mystery."--New York Times Book Review

"The unsettling atmosphere in this novel builds from the start and never disappoints. Hand deftly layers the history of the house with the past of each character and the things that haunt them. . . . A Haunting on the Hill is a love letter to Hill House and a very impressive tribute to Shirley Jackson. It is also a tremendous addition to Hand's already outstanding, multi-genre oeuvre."--Gabino Iglesias, NPR

"To join Elizabeth Hand on her journey to Hill House is to be reminded of the slippery dominance of genius, the way it both establishes and breaks its own rules . . . Hand has a gift for the sensuous, evocative detail, and her descriptions are often simultaneously seductive and spooky."--The New Yorker

Praise for A Haunting on the Hill

About the Author

Elizabeth Hand is the author of A Haunting on the Hill, the first-ever novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar, as well as Hokuloa Road, named a Notable Book of 2022 by the New York Times, and more than nineteen cross-genre novels and collections of short fiction. Her work has received the Shirley Jackson Award (three times), the World Fantasy Award (four times), the Nebula Award (twice), as well as the James M. Tiptree Jr. and Mythopoeic Society Awards, and she's written for publications including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Boston Review, and more. She divides her time between Maine and London.