NATIONAL BESTSELLER “I didn’t like this, I LOVED it.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atmosphere and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo A Rolling Stone 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • An NBC Queer Summer Beach Read to Devour • A Barnes & Noble Best Horror Book of the Year • A Scary Mommy 11 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A Them 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A Goodreads Editors' Top Pick of the Month • A Town & Country Must Read Book of the Winter • A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Fable Most Anticipated Read of the Year • A Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Horror Novel of the Year • A Book Riot Most Anticipated Book of the Year A compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the queer novella that inspired Dracula. It’s the height of the industrial revolution and ten years into Lenore’s marriage to steel magnate Henry, their relationship has soured. When Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the remote British moorlands to host a hunting party, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into their lives. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night. Carmilla, who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . . As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk. “Hungerstone is a delicious tribute to the inherent horrors of womanhood and the desperate and exquisite vulgarity of desire. This is everything I dream of in a novel.” —Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning and Lady Macbeth

Hungerstone's theme is clear in its title. Dunn's book is a meditation on desire: what it means to want and how women were historically conditioned to deny their own interests. Dunn spins the idea of a vampire into a creature of hunger that exists to give others access to their own needs. The protagonist Lenore is the chosen student of the vampire Carmilla, as Carmilla attempts to shake Lenore out of her loveless and controlling marriage to industrial magnate Henry. The plot is lurid and dark, with poisonings, romantic betrayals, and lesbian affairs, but Dunn handles all of this with horror-appropriate gusto. In particular, we appreciated that Dunn stuck to the horror and did not make a heroic story of women's liberation out of the vampire myth. Many of the women affected by Carmilla do insane and awful things and even Lenore's personal moment of revenge is ambiguous and clouded. Are we ever actually sure what happened with Henry and Cora? Did Cora deserve what happened to her? It's moments like that keep Hungerstone from becoming too simplistic. That said, the novel isn't perfect. All of us thought that Dunn spent too much time having Lenore bemoan her confinement and lack of agency -- she clearly needs to have an arc towards more independence, but we could have done with about a third of the internal reflection. And some NUBClubbers didn't like the moments of horror involving other women; they felt that Carmilla didn't make sense given the range of strange effects she had on others. Still, most of us really liked Dunn's fresh take on a vampire story and enjoyed the chaotic results of women set free. Hungerstone isn't the scariest thing we've read, but it was a very fun Halloween subread nonetheless.