Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fen | 2016 | Daisy Johnson | Buy |
| 2 | The Hotel: Ghost Stories with a Feminist Twist | 2021 | Daisy Johnson | Buy |
Daisy Johnson’s two short story collections both explore the boundary between the ordinary and the strange. Fen (2016) was her debut publication, a set of stories rooted in the English fenland landscape. The stories are populated by women and girls who experience eerie transformations, and the marshy, flat terrain of the fens acts almost as a character itself.
The Hotel: Ghost Stories with a Feminist Twist (2021) shifts the setting but keeps the same unsettling atmosphere. As the subtitle suggests, the collection takes the traditional ghost story and reworks it, centering women’s experiences and perspectives. Both books show Johnson’s gift for compressed, atmospheric storytelling that stays with readers well after the final page.