Selected by a poll of more than 180 Gothic specialists, the works described and evaluated in 21st CENTURY GOTHIC represent the most impressive Gothic novels and novellas written around the world between the years 2000-2010. Contributors of the fifty-three all-new essays include award-winning novelists, playwrights, biographers, editors, psychoanalysts, forensic psychologists, criminologists, film scholars, humanities librarians, and many of the most influential neo-Gothic literary critics of the last thirty years. Designed for the Gothic fan, student, and critic alike, this massive guide also includes a perceptive foreword by Horror scholar S.T. Joshi and an equally compelling introduction by Gothic anthologist Danel Olson. Small B&W reproductions of the novels' dust jackets preface each long original essay (often of works that have had as yet little sustained critical attention), and three appendices name consultants and contributors, honorable mentions, and novel publication data. 21st CENTURY GOTHIC aims to broaden the perspective and understanding of any student of literature from our Gothic times. A chapter averaging 5,000 words is presented on each of the following: The Angel Maker, Banquet for the Damned, Beasts, The Blind Assassin, The Book Thief, The Bride of Frankenstein: Pandora's Bride, Candles Burning, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, Clowns at Midnight, Cold Skin, The Crimson Petal and the White, A Dark Matter, The Dark Tower Series, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Dracula Dossier, The Eden Moore Trilogy, Eva Moves the Furniture, Fatal Women, Fingersmith, The Forgotten Garden, Four Souls, The Gargoyle, The Ghost Writer, Gould's Book of Fish, The Graveyard Book, Heart-Shaped Box, The Historian, The Horned Man, House of Leaves, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, The Keep, The Little Friend, Lost, The Lovely Bones, Lullaby, Martha Peake, The Meaning of Night: A Confession, Memoirs of a Master Forger, A Mercy, The Merrily Watkins Series, The Monsters of Templeton, Never Let Me Go, No Country for Old Men, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque: A Picturesque Terror, The Pumpkin Child, Real World, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Shadow of the Wind, The Terror, The Thirteenth Tale, Thursbitch, The Twilight Saga, and White Apples.