All Program Dates
October 6, 2026 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm
November 10, 2026 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm
December 8, 2026 | 6:30pm - 9:00pm*
Registration
Admission for this book club is $35 per session, or $90 for the package. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
To promote access to onsite and virtual Rosenbach experiences, we offer scholarships for each Signature Program. To inquire, email Associate Curator and Manager of Public Programs Bryn Michelson-Ziegler at bziegler@rosenbach.org.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on September 17th, for Rosenbach members on September 24th, and for the general public on October 1st.
Description
Step into the dark corridors of the unknown this season with the Ladies of the House of Love Book Club, Haunted Houses. From decaying mansions with memories of their own to isolated estates that seem to hunger for their occupants, these novels blur the line between architecture and antagonist. Discover stories about spaces that watch and manipulate, where walls keep secrets, hallways distort reality, and home becomes something to fear. Expect atmospheric reads, unsettling questions, and lively discussions about what happens when the setting itself becomes the monster.
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Parapsychologist, Dr. John Montague, rents a reputedly cursed manor to prove the supernatural. He invites three guests: Eleanor, a fragile woman who had childhood poltergeist experiences; Theodora, a bohemian psychic; and Luke, the property's heir. The house psychologically manipulates the group, driving Eleanor toward madness.
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Tananarive Due, The Good House (2003)
Angela Toussaint returns to her late grandmother's Washington home to investigate her son Corey's tragic death. She uncovers a malevolent spirit known as a baka—an entity her grandmother battled in 1929—which manipulates the town to cause violence and despair.
Tuesday, December 8, 2026
T. Kingfisher, A House with Good Bones (2023)
A Southern Gothic horror novel about Sam, an archaeoentomologist who visits her mother's sterile North Carolina home. Finding her mother anxious and the house encircled by vultures, Sam investigates and uncovers supernatural forces and the terrifying legacy of her late grandmother.
*This last session will run from 6:30 to 9:00. The book club will meet from 6:30-7:30 after which 10 other guests will arrive (Young Friends) to join the closing party from 7:30-9:00.
Book Purchase
The Rosenbach has partnered with The Head & The Hand (H&H Books) to supply us with book club selections at reasonable prices via their bookshop.org affiliate link. To order a copy, visit the following link and select our nonprofit partner, H&H Books, as the bookstore you’d like to support: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-rosenbach-book-club-the-haunted-house-fall-2026
Learn more about H&H Books here: https://www.theheadandthehand.com
Note that copies of book club selections are not currently available at H&H Books’s physical location.
Facilitators
Dr. Petra Clark is a librarian, educator, and literary historian. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a specialization in Victorian literature and art, particularly focusing on magazines created by and for women during the late 19th century. Petra has taught college courses on everything from research writing and feminist literature to comics history and monster media, as well as a recent Rosenbach course on the artist Aubrey Beardsley. She currently works in the Special Collections department at the University of Delaware Library, but when she isn’t haunting the rare books stacks, she can usually be found reading creepy fiction with her cats.
Dr. Samantha Nystrom is an avid fan of reading, painting, baking, playing Scrabble, and analyzing stories. She learned how to do such narrative pondering during her time at the University of Delaware (UD), where she received her PhD in English Literature. While at UD, she taught classes ranging from film studies to British Literature to composition, which focused on how identities are constructed and represented. Her class on British Literature, for example, focused on texts with the monstrous other, asking students: Who is the true monster? Her research asked questions about the role gardens and landscapes had in constructing personal, national, and imperial identities within 19th-century Britain; her work on Walter Scott and Gothic landscapes and architecture was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Studies in Romanticism. She currently lives in New Jersey with her vampiric cat, Percy, and is a writer at Jefferson.
Dr. Alexander Lawrence Ames, Curator & Senior Director of Collections Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, vividly recalls his teenage experiences with Gothic literature: terrifying himself so thoroughly with J.S. LeFanu’s Uncle Silas that he dared not leave his bedroom, falling under the spell of Mrs. Radcliffe’s enchanting countrysides in The Romance of the Forest, feeling the pangs of youthful longing for the noble young Valancourt in The Mysteries of Udolpho, and hearing Mr. Rochester’s voice on the wind in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Dr. Ames will lead artifact show-and-tell sessions at each meeting of Ladies of the House of Love, to help club members situate book club selections in the context of the Rosenbach’s collections. When not hosting book clubs or curating Rosenbach exhibitions, Dr. Ames is likely playing haunting melodies on his Celtic harp or strolling pensively across the castle grounds as twilight breaks.
Karen Grossman is Assistant Director of Education & Collections Engagement at the Rosenbach. Karen earned her Master of Arts in museum studies in 2025. Fueled by books and wanderlust, she believes every experience can be a great story, and every great story inspires the next adventure. When she is not hosting book clubs or leading other Rosenbach programs, she cheers for her kids in sports and watches true crime.