Blood on Her Tongue

Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen, 368 pages

Lucy has always been close to her twin sister, Sarah, so when Sarah's husband informs her that Sarah is unwell, Lucy rushes to her side. Once she arrives, she finds that Sarah's much worse than Lucy thought — she's on the verge of death, starving but refusing to eat, and ranting like a madwoman. However, as she attends to her sister, Lucy learns that this mysterious disease seems to stem from around the same time that a body was found in one of the peat bogs at Sarah's estate, making Lucy curious about the bog body as well as its effects on her sister.

Van Veen is a native of the Netherlands, and she has found a fantastic setting for her gothic historical horror novels in her homeland. Much like her first book, My Darling Dreadful Thing, Van Veen uses the landscape to create an appropriately creepy atmosphere in Blood on Her Tongue. By marrying the supernatural horror associated with the bog body with the true-to-life dangers of being a headstrong woman (or worse, a lesbian) in the 1880s and throwing in some truly gruesome body horror, Van Veen has created an excellently creepy and twisty novel. Recommended for fans of Dracula and Shirley Jackson who don't mind a wee bit of cannibalism.

Midnight Assassin

Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer by Skip Hollingsworth  321 pp.

In the mid-1880s the growing city of Austin, Texas suddenly experienced a disturbing series of assaults and murders. The first victims were servant women who lived in small shacks behind their employers' homes. The first women attacked were black women but soon white immigrants were targeted also. Later two young married women were killed and their bodies left in their backyards. The attacks were brutal, usually involving ax blows to the head and knife slashes to the body. Some of the survivors suffered permanent disabilities and one ultimately lived in the state asylum because of brain damage. Various men, mostly black, were arrested for the crimes and subsequently released due to lack of evidence. A few husbands were suspected in the later murders but there was no conviction there either. The attacks stopped as suddenly as they began. Some speculated that similar killings in another Texas town meant the killer had moved on. Others theorized that the killer had gone to England and was perpetrating the Jack the Ripper killings which began shortly after the Austin killings ended. An afterword by the author detailed his research and the difficulty in finding information. The story is similar to the Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City but not as riveting a story.