Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

Description

Some cages are built from walls.

Others are built from love.

Marguerite Périgord has spent her life imprisoned in the attic of her family’s imposing Chelsea home, hidden away from the world by the mother who insists it is for her own protection. Her companions are few: an old sewing machine, the pages of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and a carrion crow nesting among the rafters.

Outside, life continues without her.

Inside, Marguerite’s world grows stranger by the day.

As she studies her changing body and dreams of escape, her confinement begins to blur the boundaries between reality and nightmare. The quiet routines that once sustained her give way to mounting anger, unsettling transformations, and a growing sense that something within her is awakening.

Meanwhile, her mother Cécile clings desperately to the fragile social standing she has spent a lifetime constructing. Determined to prevent scandal and convinced that every sacrifice is justified, she believes control is the only path to survival. Yet beneath her polished exterior lie secrets, fears, and compromises that threaten to consume them both.

As mother and daughter spiral toward an inevitable confrontation, neither fully understands what the other has become.

Richly atmospheric and beautifully unsettling, Carrion Crow fuses Victorian gothic tradition with visceral body horror, psychological tension, and literary elegance. Heather Parry crafts an unforgettable exploration of womanhood, repression, identity, and inherited trauma, where transformation becomes both liberation and terror.

Dark, lyrical, and deeply original, Carrion Crow is a mesmerizing novel about mothers and daughters, the monstrous expectations placed upon women, and the extraordinary power that can emerge from lives lived in silence.

Perfect for readers who enjoy gothic fiction, queer horror, literary horror, feminist fiction, and unsettling stories where beauty and terror exist side by side.

Book Details

• Author: Heather Parry
• ISBN: 9781805680550
• Format: Paperback
• Genre: Gothic Fiction, Literary Horror, LGBTQ+ Fiction
• Themes: Mothers and Daughters, Body Horror, Identity, Transformation, Family Secrets, Victorian Society