What would you sacrifice to make your dreams come true? In Cat Scully’s Below the Grand Hotel, Mable Rose Dixon’s dream of becoming a vaudevillian is complicated when she stumbles into a hotel from hell. Literally.
Set in 1920s Manhattan, Below the Grand Hotel (out May 6, 2025 from Clash Books) takes readers on an opulent ride into the dark heart of decadence. Mable is a scrappy wanna-be stage star who has taken to thievery to make ends meet while she waits for her big break. When she sees a beautiful woman sporting a massive diamond necklace entering a midtown hotel, Mable thinks she’s found her meal ticket. Unfortunately, nothing is what it seems in the Grand, and soon the aspiring starlet discovers she’s become trapped in the demon-filled building, body and soul.
Below the Grand Hotel is a wonderfully creative story that combines classic horror themes with a unique setting to create a fresh and entertaining tale. Scully’s power of description delivers endlessly breathtaking scenery—from marbled ballrooms lined with Greek statues to feather-and-ruffle filled dressing rooms—while her nightmarish narrative continuously builds tension that threatens to boil over into demonic violence at any moment. Horror authors have long understood there is something captivating about juxtaposing the beautiful and the terrible, and Below the Grand Hotel does just that. Demonic dancers move in a “flurry of silk and blood,” handsome men reveal fanged and hungry second mouths, and cleaning away sticky clumps of gore becomes second nature for the inhabitants of this satanic site.
And yet, there is an undefinable distance between Below the Grand Hotel’s violent imagery and its impact on the reader. While there are plenty of blood-drenched scenes of demons feasting on flesh, innocents succumbing to supernatural afflictions, and painful transformations, the story never allows the reader to fully step inside the shoes of the tormented. Below the Grand Hotel has been compared to both The Great Gatsby and Hellraiser, but those stories take great pains to physically place the reader inside the experiences of its protagonists. In this novel, we watch as Mable struggles to survive but we rarely feel her do it. This lack of viscerality is not a problem, per say, but it is a marked difference from many novels exploring the same themes.
Under the Grand Hotel is a deliciously demonic period drama that is sure to delight horror fans of all stripes. Don’t wait to add this one to your TBR.
Looking for more satanic stories? Check out Thrift Store Finds’ bonkers Worship the Night.