If what gripped you in Carmilla was Laura’s dangerous attraction to the charming stranger who calls herself Mircalla, you’ll love how The Gilda Stories centers desire and companionship within vampirism. Like Carmilla slipping into the Styrian schloss after the staged carriage mishap, Gilda is drawn into intense bonds that blur comfort and predation. Across decades, her relationships echo the same alluring pull you felt when Laura clutched Carmilla’s hand during those moonlit conversations—only here the story follows the vampire’s perspective, turning that intimacy into a moving, queer journey of survival and love.

If you enjoyed how Carmilla unfolds through accounts—Laura’s recollections, the General’s tragic letter about his ward, and Baron Vordenburg’s learned notes—Dracula doubles down on that documentary feel. Journals, letters, telegrams, and even ship logs assemble a hunt for a blood‑drinker much as Vordenburg’s scholarship exposes Mircalla’s lineage. The thrill of connecting clues—puncture wounds hidden by lace, nightly visitations, a portrait revealing a true name—lands with the same chill as when Laura finally learns Carmilla is Countess Karnstein.

If the tight focus on Laura, her father’s secluded estate, and the singular, disquieting guest who steals into her bedroom drew you in, The Woman in Black will scratch the same itch. Like Laura’s long, dim corridors and hushed drawing rooms where Carmilla sits too close, Arthur Kipps wanders an empty, fog‑bound house where one figure dominates the atmosphere. The way menace pools in parlors and on stairwells—as with Laura’s fainting fits and nighttime embraces—builds dread in an intimate space until a single presence rules every heartbeat.

If you loved how Carmilla takes its time—strange dreams, languor, the portrait of Mircalla, whispers of the Karnsteins—before unveiling the horror, Mexican Gothic delivers that same slow tightening of the noose. Noemí’s visit to High Place echoes Laura hosting a beguiling stranger: each scene deepens unease until the family’s rot and the house’s true nature are laid bare. The way affection curdles into entrapment recalls Laura’s hazy illnesses and Carmilla’s possessive tenderness—only here the revelation hits with a lush, delirious crescendo.

If Laura’s first‑person account—her naiveté, her fascination with Carmilla’s caresses, her selective recall of events like the funeral procession and the midnight visits—kept you deliciously off‑balance, Merricat’s narration will enthrall you. Jackson locks you inside a mind as enveloping and skewed as Laura’s, where domestic rituals and intrusions from outsiders press in until the truth feels slippery. That intimate confessionality—so key when Laura swears she knows and doesn’t know Mircalla—powers this novel’s eerie hold.