After Fingersmith
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Fingersmith hooked you with its Victorian grime, forbidden lesbian desire, and mid-book shocks that upended everything you thought you knew. You fell for Sue and Maud because they outwitted patriarchal systems with raw authenticity, no sanitization, no moralizing—just women scheming, surviving, and loving in a world built to crush them. That hunger for atmospheric dread, psychological depth, and feminist defiance in historical fiction doesn't end here.