My review of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Lois the Witch and Other Stories is now live at Innsmouth Free Press as part of their Women in Horror Week. Like most Victorian writers Gaskell wrote her share of ghost stories and those in the collection are a nice grim assortment. Not only that but I suggest that Gaskell’s ghost stories serve as proto-noir and precursors to the  works of Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, and Dorothy Hughes.

I also make a joke about bonnets and four-in-hand neckties.

Go check it out.