What Are “Shudder Novels”?
Long before horror was a genre and Gothic fiction found its academic footing, a particular kind of story didn’t scream; it shivered. Rather than relying on jump scares or excessive gore, these stories crept in slowly—through candlelight, fog, nightmares, a shocking face in the mirror. These were shudder novels—a term that once prompted sneers from critics but has since come to define some of the most enduring and artful stories in the Gothic tradition.
Shudder novels are a portal into the sublime. The phrase originates from the French roman frisson, literally a “shiver novel.” These stories combine the eerie, the mysterious, and the emotionally intense.
You’ll find:
Crumbling buildings, wind-lashing storms, candlelit laboratories
Apparitions and monsters—often metaphorical as much as literal
Family secrets, scientific secrets, buried traumas—always something hidden that refuses to stay buried
Not just monsters, but people who act like monsters; not just ghosts, but memories that haunt more deeply than phantoms
Longing, guilt, obsession, and dread.
Famous examples?
Of course, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the prototype: atmospheric, philosophical, and deeply unsettling. Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula carry the same DNA. More recently, novels like Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, Michelle Paver’s Thin Air, and Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney revive the tradition, leaning into the dread and dread-beauty of the form.
I wrote Mademoiselle Frankenstein as a love letter to this tradition. It reimagines Gothic horror through the eyes of a young woman who dares to create life in an age of revolution and war. But it isn’t solely a monster story. It’s about longing, grief, the uncanny inheritance of family, and the way yearning can curdle into obsession. That’s where the shudders come in.
Océane’s story is full of secrets—letters never sent, feelings never spoken, and the terrifying consequences of quietly transgressing nature. There are no jump scares. Instead, you’ll find the realization that love, when twisted by grief, has become a monster.
So if you’re a fan of stories that chill without cheapening, that stir the air with terror, that make you shudder at truths half-buried—then you’re already a reader of the tradition. And Mademoiselle Frankenstein was written for you.
What shudder novels can you think of?
