Mrs. Jekyll

by Emma Glass

Genres: Literary Fiction; Horror; Gothic

Synopsis

By turns tender and devastating, Mrs Jekyll contorts Stevenson's gothic classic into a sumptuous and shocking account of modern womanhood.

Rosy Winter is dying.

Something is growing in her. A hard knot in her chest. A dark spot that cannot be cut out, now seeping outward.

Her husband, Charlie—kind, supportive, but somewhat out of his depth—offers what relief he can as she suffers. His sister, Sally, offers even less, distracted by a shift within her own husband.

But beyond the homeopathic remedies, the dinner party obligations, the snatched whispers on wards and in staffrooms, a force —murderous, sensual, feverish—has been awoken and is stirring within her. A refusal to live, as much as to die.

In searing, lyrical prose that shimmers with rage and longing, Emma Glass has delivers an utterly singular and surreal story of power and powerlessness, light and dark, and life and death.

Release date: April 7, 2026

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 128

Sample

days are counted

Have you ever seen that advert on the telly, the one where an old couple are sitting outside on a bench? The old lady is knitting, needles clacking together, and she never takes her eyes off the stitch. Her husband is reading the newspaper and he stops to break off a square of chocolate, and he places it on her knee. He breaks off another square and pops it in his mouth. She doesn’t stop knitting, but she raises her eyebrows and smiles.

When Charlie comes into the room with cups of tea, I have just seen this advert and I am unravelling. He smiles when he sees the tears in my eyes. He laughs at me when I cry at adverts. But he realises these tears are different. He can see my shoulders shaking; he can see the pain surging, the fingers of it crawling up my throat. My mouth is wide, wet, and it all spills out.

He is by my side, his arms are around me, he holds me hard against his thick flesh. I wrack and rattle.

Hey, hey, hey, he muffles into my hair. What’s all this?

It won’t be us.

Of course it will.

It won’t be us.

Rosy.

It is pointless struggling against him. I let him hold me, let my heart wear out against his steady thump. He taps me and soothes me like a cradled baby.

The tea is going cold.

Charlie is good at getting me through these moments. He’s good at carrying on. We don’t dwell.

We eat bowls of fruit and yoghurt. I hate peeling oranges. I can’t bear pips and pith and the way the juice stains my fingertips. He does it all. He cuts the grapes. He cuts everything small so that it looks more than it is. If I eat a bowlful, even if it’s only five grapes and three strawberries and a tablespoon of yoghurt, I have done it, I have eaten a bowlful of fruit and yoghurt, something I have done today, something I can write down on a list and put a tick in a box next to it. Little victory.

He has been getting a little belly. He won’t let anything go to waste, like the mothers of picky children. His belly, like my head, is smooth and round and hairless. 

night was cloudless

Impossible moon: I could pluck it out of the sky, wear it on a chain around my neck. Hanging low, kissing the falling leaves silver. The wind is rolling a crisp packet down the street. Everything crackles this time of year. The leaves under my feet. I can smell wood burning in the big, old houses, with fireplaces in every room, but no fires built; inefficient wood burners, not making much heat, but toasting mallows on the wind tonight. I breathe it in, walking home the long way round.

I’m all bundled up, hat and scarf, shoulders heavy with wool. Two ghouls go by shrieking happily, swinging little orange buckets full of sweets. Parents calling out after them. My heart stops, thickness of muscle in my throat when I come round the corner into webs with huge black spiders sitting in them, ...