A darkly emotional book-club novel about a woman who creates a garden for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged — and discovers that grief, guilt...
Louise Worthington
Louise Worthington writes psychologically acute fiction spanning psychological suspense, book-club fiction and literary horror. Her novels explore damaged relationships, complicated families and the darkness that unsettles seemingly ordinary lives.
In Rachel’s Garden, a symbolic garden of rooms becomes a map of love, loss, guilt and revenge. In Distorted Days, a betrayed woman’s life fractures into dark comedy, loneliness and fragile recovery. Her darker novels, including Doctor Glass and The Entrepreneur, explore the extremes of trauma, ambition, violence and psychological control. Rosie Shadow is her first horror novel which combines Gothic atmosphere and psychological intensity with a darkly original reimagining of the zombie myth.
Louise has a degree in Literature and a postgraduate qualification in Psychology. She is the author of three psychological suspense novels published by Bloodhound Books and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
She lives in Shropshire and is usually working on a novel in which someone knows more than they are prepared to admit.
Where to start
For darkly emotional book-club fiction:
Start with Rachel’s Garden, a novel about a woman who creates a symbolic garden for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged — and discovers that grief, guilt and revenge all have roots.
Then read Distorted Days, a darkly comic and deeply human novel about betrayal, breakdown, loneliness and the fragile possibility of beginning again.
For darker psychological suspense:
Read Doctor Glass, a disturbing psychological suspense novel about grief, revenge, maternal filicide and the dangerous intimacy between therapist and patient.
Then try The Entrepreneur, a dark, satirical psychological thriller about ambition, reality television, serial-killer art and the public’s appetite for murderabilia.
For literary horror:
Rosie Shadow is about a grieving woman drawn to the enigmatic man who runs tours through a former prison—and to his terrifying six-year-old daughter.
Across all Louise Worthington’s novels, women are pushed to the edge of endurance — and sometimes beyond it.
Louise Worthington writes psychologically acute fiction spanning psychological suspense, book-club fiction and literary horror. Her novels explore damaged relationships, complicated families and the darkness that unsettles seemingly ordinary lives.
In Rachel’s Garden, a symbolic garden of rooms becomes a map of love, loss, guilt and revenge. In Distorted Days, a betrayed woman’s life fractures into dark comedy, loneliness and fragile recovery. Her darker novels, including Doctor Glass and The Entrepreneur, explore the extremes of trauma, ambition, violence and psychological control. Rosie Shadow is her first horror novel which combines Gothic atmosphere and psychological intensity with a darkly original reimagining of the zombie myth.
Louise has a degree in Literature and a postgraduate qualification in Psychology. She is the author of three psychological suspense novels published by Bloodhound Books and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
She lives in Shropshire and is usually working on a novel in which someone knows more than they are prepared to admit.
Where to start
For darkly emotional book-club fiction:
Start with Rachel’s Garden, a novel about a woman who creates a symbolic garden for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged — and discovers that grief, guilt and revenge all have roots.
Then read Distorted Days, a darkly comic and deeply human novel about betrayal, breakdown, loneliness and the fragile possibility of beginning again.
For darker psychological...
Books
View AllRachel’s Garden
A darkly emotional book-club novel about a woman who creates a garden for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged — and discovers that grief, guilt and revenge all have roots.
At Maple Cottage, on the edge of Peckforton Woods, Rachel Jordan begins to build a garden of rooms: one for her dead mother, one for her lost father, one for the friend she...
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Distorted Days
A darkly comic literary novel about betrayal, miscarriage and the strange, unruly business of surviving yourself.
Doris is not the sort of woman who falls apart elegantly.
When she discovers her husband, John, in bed with Lisa — her closest friend — she is carrying a pregnancy she has not yet announced, a future she has barely dared to imagine,...
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Doctor Glass
She saved lives as a therapist. Now she's destroying her own.
Dr Emma-Jane Glass is a respected clinical psychologist who believes the world gets it wrong about women who commit the unthinkable.
When she publicly argues that maternal filicide is often rooted in untreated depression rather than evil, the backlash is swift — and vicious.
A hate...
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Published in Literary Magazines
Kitchen Call, Orbis, forthcoming July 2026
Red Telephone Boxes, London Grip September 2025
Selkie Wife, The Lake,...
'Listen to 'It Smells Like Rain.'
Stained Glass Lives is 'a sumptuous banquet of love, death, betrayal... authentic and moving.' —Louise Stokes...
Latest Updates
I am honoured and delighted to be nominated for a second time for the Pushcart Prize for poetry. Poetose Press nominated by poem Dawn. Thank you to...
Some news I'm still processing: One of my poems has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize! Thank you to the editors at Coffin Bell for this honour....
- The title suggests that time itself has changed shape. How does the novel capture the distortion of ordinary life after betrayal and loss?
- Doris...
Book Club Questions for Rachel’s Garden
- Rachel creates a garden room for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged. Did you see the garden as an act...