Motherthing (Paperback) - Ainslie Hogarth

A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law

'A gruesome, blackly funny, utterly original feminist horror story'
New York Times, Notable Book of the Year

'A buzz-worthy and ferocious horror comedy from one of the genre's most promising voices'
Buzzfeed

Abby Lamb has done it. She's found the Great Good in her husband, Ralph, and together they will start a family and put all the darkness in her childhood to rest. But then the Lambs move in with Ralph's mother, Laura, whose depression has made it impossible for her to live on her own. She's venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, who has a complicated understanding of motherhood given the way her own, now-estranged, mother raised her.

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost starts to haunt Abby and Ralph in very different ways. Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is being terrorized by a force intent on taking everything she loves away from her. With everything on the line, Abby must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to prove her adoration to Ralph and break Laura's hold on the family for good.

About the Author

Ainslie Hogarth has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland and has published two YA horror novels, in the U.S. with Flux Books and France in with Editions Milan. The Lonely is about a girl who is crushed by a rock and bleeds to death all day long, and The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) is about a girl who may or may not have murdered all of her friends with a pick-axe. Her short fiction has been published in Hazlitt, Black Static, and elsewhere.