"More chills in its little length than in a whole shelf of bestsellers." - Stephen King "At once moral fable, cautionary ghost story and inspired attack on the

The Gothic, Romanticism's gritty older sibling, has flourished in myriad permutations since the eighteenth century. In Gothicka, Victoria Nelson identifies the

The "twisted tree" is a blackthorn branch, picked by Tansy Penderil, a naive young Cornish girl, on the same day she meets the handsome but diabolical Roger Cha