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.

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.

Ainslie Hogarth's profile page

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 in France 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.

A New York Times Notable Book the Year • A Cosmopolitan Best Horror Book of All Time • A New York Times Editors’ Choice • A Belletrist Book Club selection

“It’s a quirky, gruesome, utterly original feminist horror experience.”
—The New York Times

"No one crafts horror-comedy quite like Ainslie Hogarth."
—Maclean's

“Hogarth’s way with words enlivens every page of this psycho romp. . . . Her fearlessness and utter lack of inhibition animate the desperate longing and bitter trauma at the heart of this ghost story, administered with a steady drip of comic relief. Profane, insane, hilarious, disgusting—and unexpectedly moving.”
—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)

“A masterfully crafted horror novel that’s by turns humorous and deeply unsettling. . . . Abby makes a wonderful narrator; full of wry insights and frothy humor. . . . This dark domestic drama packs a punch.”
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
“Motherthing is an inventive addition to the realm of domestic horror, offering masterful subtlety and a blood-soaked commentary on the maternal impulse. […]Artfully unspooling the protagonist’s deterioration at a nearly imperceptible pace, Hogarth creates a brutal, bloody conclusion that is equal parts surprising and inevitable.”
—Quill & Quire
“Abby’s unpredictable insights and turns of phrase are evident on every page, and they are as irresistible as the urge to see for oneself the ghost in the basement, to touch a kitchen knife that has already killed. We are trapped within her compelling, deranged consciousness and we like it, which is the true horror of the story.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
“[A] gutsy, gory mashup of domestic horror and dark humour.”
—The Guardian

“Filled with sharp, crackling sentences, which bend variously sinister, humorous and sad, Ainslie Hogarth's new novel is a stunner. Like Mona Awad's Bunny or Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen, Motherthing is a fabulous, frightening story built from fine, fine prose.”
—Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie

“This novel is bursting with smart, provocative, heart-breaking things to say about the nature of grief and its ability to take up just as much—if not more—physical space than the actual person lost. Motherthing is gory and irreverent and totally irresistible—I can’t wait to see what Hogarth spooks us with, next.”
—Courtney Maum, author of Touch and Costalegre

“Quirky, unexpected, and charming, Motherthing uses all the right ingredients combined in equal measure to ensure a delicious experience. Highly recommend.”
—Mystery and Suspense Magazine

“A darkly comic, kaleidoscopic novel of unhealthy fixations, love, murder, the gifts and wounds that family can inflict and one woman's fight to save herself.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Fierce and unexpected, this darkly comedic horror is an exploration of how we haunt ourselves and how we allow others to haunt us, especially those closest to us. A crass narrator and an unraveling plot, coupled with subtext on sensitive and relatable topics, bring a dose of reality to what is otherwise a delightfully unhinged romp through domestic hell.”
—Rue Morgue Magazine

“If you took Jane Fonda’s character from the 2005 film Monster-in-Law, made her an angry ghost, and mixed that with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, you might get Hogarth’s new novel. . . . Fans of Jeff Strand, Grady Hendrix, and other dark-humor takes on horror will enjoy Motherthing.”
—Booklist

"Told in Abby’s snarky, sarcastic, and increasingly unstable voice, this tale of psychological horror goes to places that invoke many trigger warnings, even as readers will cackle along with Abby’s wry observations ... recommended for horror readers who like to see all of everyone’s issues eviscerated on the table and who won’t mind never again being able to eat chicken à la king after the novel’s disturbing take on it."
—Library Journal