Bad Books for Bad People
Every month (or so), Tenebrous Kate and Jack Guignol cover the weirdest, kinkiest, and most outrageous fiction we can unearth. The books discussed range from classics of gothic literature to startling works of new weird, from romantic potboilers to horror epics, from cult favorites to obscure pulp treasures. Join us for a smarter-than-average look at WAY-weirder-than-average books.
- Update frequency
- every 25 days
- Average duration
- 83 minutes
- Episodes
- 112
- Years Active
- 2016 - 2025
Episode 11: Gilded Needles - 19th Century Fear City
Michael McDowell's Gilded Needles is a captivating tale of two families from dramatically different circumstances, engaged in a bitter feud set against the backdrop of late 19th Century New York Cit…
Mini Episode 1: Armageddon Rag - 500+ Pages of an Aging Hippie Sneering at your Record Collection
For the first mini episode, Kate and Jack tackle the book that is the origin story of the podcast. Sure, a George RR Martin novel about the dark and violent side of the 60s focusing on ritual murder…
Episode 10: Strangely Beautiful - A Nice Book for Nice People?
Author Leanna Renee Hieber has created an alternative Victorian London that merges ghost-hunting, Jack the Ripper, capital-R Romantic love, and a healthy dose of post-Harry-Potter magic in her novel…
Episode 9: Sax Rohmer Double Feature - Fu Manchu and Sumuru
British pulp author Sax Rohmer built a career on depicting the threat posed to the Western way of life by the Demonic Other. His most famous creation, Dr. Fu Manchu, is infamous not just for the hid…
Episode 8: Prince Lestat in the Realms of Atlantis - Gothic Vampires Go New Age
Beginning with her smash hit debut novel, 1976's Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice has spent a career detailing the lives, loves, and melodramas of a sprawling cast of supernatural characters. I…
Episode 7: The Incal - Epic French Space Opera Comics
After failing in his quest to find financing for his 18- to 24-hour-long film version of Frank Herbert's Dune, Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo and Santa Sangre) partnered with…
Episode 6: Alraune - The Ultimate Femme Fatale
Hanns Heinz Ewers' 1911 novel Alraune is part horror, part science fiction, part decadent prose, and absolutely of the most extreme femme fatale stories ever written. Kate and Jack tackle Ewers' com…
Episode 5: R.L. Stine's Goosebumps - Halloween 365 for Creepy Kids
In the mid-1990s, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series was a sensation, creeping out kids across the globe. The phenomenon of kid-friendly horror fiction is hardly a new one, so Kate and Jack tackle three…
Episode 4: To the Devil a Daughter - The Real Devil is Taxes
Ultra-prolific British pulp author Dennis Wheatley is best known for his occult thrillers, which combined Wheatley's fascination with magic with his conservative politics. Kate and Jack tackle his 1…
Episode 3: My Sweet Audrina - Tween Trauma
The potboiler Gothics of V.C. Andrews were beloved by adult women... and their tween daughters. Both Jack and Kate are new to the author's infamous tales of female woe, and they discuss what it's li…
Episode 2: Image of the Beast and Blown - When SF Goes XXX
Kate and Jack discuss Image of the Beast and its sequel Blown by Philip José Farmer. Released in 1968 and 1969 by adult science fiction publisher Essex House, Kate describes these ultra-explicit, su…
Episode 1: BleakWarrior - Black Metal New Weird?
In this episode, Kate and Jack talk about BleakWarrior, Alistair Rennie's 2016 novel in the New Weird genre that at least one reviewer has linked to black metal. Jack provides some far more accurate…