The Inky Phoenix | Dracula
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Dracula
Bram Stoker
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A new, beautifully laid-out edition of Bram Stoker's 1897 classic that invented vampire horror as a genre.
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Posts about this title from The Inky Phoenix
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
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• Oct 5 2025
Lacey N. Dunham's Favorite Books
Yes, you will want them all.
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The Inky Phoenix\
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Kathryn Budig\
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• Nov 19 2024
DRACULA Inky Phoenix Convo
For those of y'all who missed our convo on DRACULA. So many thoughts for this one! Comparing to the Francis Ford C. movie, why doesn't Van Helsing ever shut up, and more!
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The Inky Phoenix\
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Kathryn Budig\
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• Nov 11 2024
Save the Date: DRACULA Zoom Conversation
Nov 17th at 3pm ET
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The Inky Phoenix\
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Kathryn Budig\
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• Nov 5 2024
Today’s the Day! 🗳️
For the love of books …
21 books
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The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
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• Oct 2 2024
🦇🦇🦇ARE YOU READY? 🦇🦇🦇
Our October pick is here: DRACULA by Bram Stoker
Once a year, I pick a book that has shaped me as a writer and reader — a classic that you know, but maybe never read. While DRACULA may seem like an obvious choice for October, it’s also a launching pad for our November pick (and debut Inky Phoenix Press publication) STRANGE BEASTS(October 15th 2024)!
One of our main STRANGE BEASTS characters is Samantha Harker, daughter of Mina Harker from the original Dracula. Care to get to know our girl’s family tree?
Grab your capes and prop open your coffins — time to transport ourselves into one of the best gothic reads of all time. 🧛🏻⚰️
Any version of Dracula will do, and odds are you might have an old copy on your shelf, but if buying new, please support indie sellers like our partner @bluebicyclebooks
Ps. I have some epic styling photos for this soon — still waiting on my “costume” to arrive. 😌
2 books
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
\
• Oct 20 2023
My Most Impactful Books
It’s so hard to narrow it down, but here are some of my most impactful reads. What are yours? Repost @bindery_books
Posts about this book from across Bindery
Bee's Books\
\
Bailee Russo\
\
• Jun 3
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I’ve always had the perhaps unpopular literary opinion that Le Fanu’s Carmilla beats Stoker’s Dracula by a country mile, and it’s not just because I like to see women get what they want. \
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Written 25 years before Dracula, Carmilla is short, with an economy of language that makes the entire story feel like a single feverish dream. Both were written during an era of incredible social change and wrestled with ideas about modernity, class and social order, feminine sexual agency, and moral purity. The vampire in both Carmilla and Dracula embodies the perversion that threatens “goodness.” Both are also rooted in Victorian anxieties about cleanliness and contagion, the rising influence of the middle classes, the parasitism of the nobility class, and, more simply, intolerance of “the other.” Count Dracula is of a noble, ancient line, while Carmilla’s background is ambiguous but her uncanny magnetism and influence place her firmly in this position of an “other” who commands significant power. \
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Anyway (and this is all necessary background, I promise), where Le Fanu succeeds for me in a way Stoker doesn’t–besides that Stoker loved himself a dead horse for beating–is in the utter failure to make me fear Carmilla. She is not grotesque as Dracula often is for Stoker. And the moments of longing and eroticism in Carmilla are so compelling, so tender, that I surely would have been vampire food.\
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I mean, look at this: \
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“I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."\
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How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!\
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Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.\
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Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."\
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I started from her.\
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She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face colorless and apathetic.\
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"Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in.”\
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You’re swooning, right? You’re swooning. It’s an incredibly effective work and it doesn’t need 600 pages to be so. \
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Carmilla laid a foundation for much of the subsequent vampire fiction of the European canon, and the popularity has never stalled. Now, what I loved about Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone, was that it honored the original work while also subverting its narrative into a bloody celebration of good-for-her-style feminine sexual agency. \
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Lenore is a wife of ten years to a social-climbing steel magnate, Henry, but their marriage is stale and unsatisfying. They’ve just moved into the imposing Nethershaw manor in the English countryside, surrounded by wind-blown moors and a sense of looming dread. \
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When a carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla to stay in the manor, something begins to stir in Lenore. \
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So, it’s a Carmilla retelling, obviously, and it takes all of what is lovely about the original – the atmospheric sense of dread that drapes itself across the narrative like wine-red velvet, the bloodthirsty longing, the tender eroticism, but it also expands upon the idea of a woman’s hunger within a repressive context. Lenore’s personhood, womanhood, ability to experience pleasure, and agency are all tightly restricted, and Carmilla is the force that helps her to reacquaint herself with want. This hunger permeates the book, and it’s brutal, bloody, and so, so satisfying. This thematic exploration of desire is deepened through the parallel explorations of the appetites of the capitalist class, the industrial revolution, and colonial expansion. It's also subversive of the original narrative in that Carmilla's arrival is indeed a threat to the patriarchal status quo and to the carefully curated sterility of Lenore's life -- but this danger is ultimately imperative for Lenore's survival and liberation. \
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Two things I really appreciate: one, that this is not a story about Carmilla. She is an almost surface-level character, and little of her motivation or backstory is necessary for the story. Though what bites we get of her on-page are delicious (she’s sarcastic, strange, beautiful, and mean – consider me seduced! I’ve seen enough!), she is little else, ultimately, than a catalyst for Lenore. This is not a love story – at least, not one between the two women, though the development of their relationship has tension and tenderness enough to get by on. Lenore, on the other hand, is an expertly fleshed-out protagonist. She’s riddled with juxtapositions, complications, and short-comings. She is intelligent but fearful, self-repressed but full of rage, self-involved but self-aware. She is not good, she was never meant to be, and it’s for this reason that she’s so compelling. \
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Second, that the tone and pacing don’t recreate but implies the original novel’s sensory experience. Much of the first half of our story is a meandering through Lenore’s interior self, and it’s quiet, introspective, but never dull. The prose is lovely and elegant, and throughout the setting reverberates an anxious, eerie ticking of a clock, with the distinct impression that time is running out. In contrast, the final third of the story is a blood-drenched frenzy, though this sudden change of pace feels intuitively correct. It is like the death throes of a wounded animal; there is a heavy sense of inevitability, as though it is only right, only natural, that Lenore should rip control of her life back with her own bared teeth, that things should erupt from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
Review: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
3 books
1
Peppered Ink\
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Mary\
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• May 6
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My Personal "Bookonomics"
In true Type A fashion, I create an investigative project for myself based around what I spend on books and what my library has cost overall.
Follow me on Bindery here! https://marysmanybooks.binderybooks.com/
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Boneyard Picnic\
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Natalie Meagan\
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• Nov 4 2025
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Dracula A Love Tale | An Unhinged Review
A spoiler rich, in real time review of a new Dracula movie that I am obsessed with. Duh.
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The Inky Phoenix\
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Kathryn Budig\
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• Oct 5 2025
Lacey N. Dunham's Favorite Books
Yes, you will want them all.
10 books
4
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Peppered Ink\
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Mary\
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• Sep 12 2025
Join for free
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Join for free or login](https://marysmanybooks.binderybooks.com/item/0pL715QfJzGves8vQGmn/)
After Hours & Let's Talk Vampires
In which Mary rambles somewhat about vampire lore! What are some of your favorite vampire stories? Comment and let me know!
10 books
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The Inky Phoenix\
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Kathryn Budig\
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• Nov 19 2024
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Upgrade for $5 or login](https://inkyphoenix.binderybooks.com/item/dTlOsQ3ktPOBiKc9pUFD/)
DRACULA Inky Phoenix Convo
1 book
3
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
\
• Nov 11 2024
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Upgrade for $5 or login](https://inkyphoenix.binderybooks.com/item/nepo4TXSGsTapehSX9AE/)
Save the Date: DRACULA Zoom Conversation
Nov 17th at 3pm ET
1 book
5
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
\
• Nov 5 2024
Today’s the Day! 🗳️
For the love of books …
21 books
5
2
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
\
• Oct 2 2024
🦇🦇🦇ARE YOU READY? 🦇🦇🦇
Our October pick is here: DRACULA by Bram Stoker
One of our main STRANGE BEASTS characters is Samantha Harker, daughter of Mina Harker from the original Dracula. Care to get to know our girl’s family tree?
Grab your capes and prop open your coffins — time to transport ourselves into one of the best gothic reads of all time. 🧛🏻⚰️
Ps. I have some epic styling photos for this soon — still waiting on my “costume” to arrive. 😌
2 books
The Inky Phoenix\
\
Kathryn Budig\
\
• Oct 20 2023
My Most Impactful Books
It’s so hard to narrow it down, but here are some of my most impactful reads. What are yours? Repost @bindery_books