Skip to content

Hungerstone

Pages
336
Published
2025
Language
English

Synopsis

Hungerstone is Kat Dunn's fierce, sapphic reworking of Carmilla, the nineteenth-century novella that helped inspire Dracula. Lenore has spent a decade as the composed, dutiful wife of Henry, a self-made steel magnate. When his ambitions move them from London to Nethershaw, a crumbling estate in the north of England, the cracks in their loveless marriage — and one dark secret from Henry's last hunt — leave Lenore starving for something she cannot name.

Then a carriage overturns near the house, and Carmilla arrives: pale by day, vivid by night, and utterly magnetic. As Carmilla draws out a hunger Lenore has buried for years, girls in the surrounding villages begin to sicken, wasting away with a strange and bloody thirst. What blooms between the two women is intoxicating and dangerous in equal measure.

Atmospheric, feminist, and brimming with rage and appetite, Hungerstone is a gothic story about desire, control, and the cost of a woman finally allowing herself to want. It reworks a classic vampire tale into something sharp, sensual, and entirely its own.

About the author

K
Kat Dunn

Kat Dunn is a British author who grew up in London and has also lived in Japan, Australia, and France. She holds degrees in Japanese from SOAS and English from Warwick, and has written on mental health for The Guardian and Mind. She is the author of the Battalion of the Dead trilogy (Dangerous Remedy, Monstrous Design, Glorious Poison), Bitterthorn, and the gothic reworking of Carmilla, Hungerstone.

Characters

LenoreProtagonist

The composed wife of a steel magnate, starving for meaning in a loveless marriage.

CarmillaSupporting

A magnetic, mysterious young woman who arrives after a carriage accident and awakens Lenore's hunger.

All characters in Hungerstone

Read all 2 reviews