female protagonist

Cover of On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield, featuring a dark-skinned woman looking side-eyed through branches and plants.
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Book Review: On Sundays She Picked Flowers, by Yah Yah Scholfield

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An amazing new talent has burst onto the Southern Gothic horror scene. On Sundays She Picked Flowers is the self-published debut novel of Yah Yah Scholfield, but I sure wouldn’t have guessed that from the text (reissued Jan. 27, 2026 by Saga Press). Protagonist Jude is a fa character, the environment she lives in is rich enough to sink into it, the love story is disturbing yet striking, and in the end, Jude finds a way to make peace with her violent past and her current situation. Violent? Oh, yes, this book contains very graphic violence, from beatings to fights and homicides, with very messy results. It is deliberatively transgressive along several other axes, too, but for the story, not for shock value. Nothing feels cheap or sensational here, but rather, thoughtful and deeply felt (and often sensual).

Cover of Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce, featuring a young black woman in a high-necked gown, with her hair worn high, and fancy earrings, against old-fashioned patterned wallpaper.
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Book Review: Psychopomp & Circumstance, by Eden Royce

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I enjoyed Eden Royce’s new book, Psychopomp & Circumstance, coming Oct. 21. It’s billed as a Southern Gothic fantasy, but for me, it’s much less about the fantastic and much more of a coming-of-age story, as a young woman learns to stand up for herself and make choices; she also learns some unsettling truths about her family and its history.  From the author’s website:Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. …When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother’s wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp—the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt’s unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.

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