🇬🇧 THIS BOOK IS IN ENGLISH

Rottenheart by Kat Dunn

Standalone · A gender-swapped Hamlet retelling

Revenge me. For I am murdered.

Odette and Cecilia move between their grand homes in Hampstead and the ancient, imposing Herne House in Suffolk.

Then Odette's artist mother, Lydia, inexplicably sickens and dies.

A dark veil falls over the household. Odette's cold and implacable aunt Claudine takes control, and the announcement that she will become Odette's new stepmother makes grief feel even more suffocating.

But Lydia has not truly left.

A sinister presence begins to reveal itself within Herne House, forcing Odette to confront a horrifying possibility: her mother's death was no natural tragedy. Lydia wants revenge, and her daughter must decide how far she will go to answer the dead.

Set in the atmospheric 1890s, Rottenheart is a darkly intoxicating sapphic gothic horror novel about grief, family trauma, madness and the terrible demands of vengeance. Award-winning author Kat Dunn transforms Hamlet into a queer ghost story filled with historical atmosphere, psychological dread and exquisite sapphic yearning.

"Feed this directly into my veins." - Taylor Jenkins Reid

"A darkly intoxicating and fierce sapphic retelling of Hamlet. Extraordinary." - Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

"Sinister and devastating. I want to read it again and again and again." - Bea Fitzgerald

"A dark, sensual delight." - Heat, Book of the Week

📚 FORMAT & DETAILS

Format: Hardback
Pages: 480
Genre: Gothic Horror / Sapphic Fiction
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Manilla Press
Published: 4 June 2026
Language: English
Recommended age: 16+

Tropes & themes: Sapphic romance • Ghost story • Gender-swapped Hamlet retelling • Historical fiction • Revenge • Grief and madness

⚠️ Content notes: Death of a parent • Grief • Gothic horror • Supernatural elements • Psychological horror • Sapphic romance • Family trauma • Madness themes