Ainslie Hogarth Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Standalone Novels
The Lonely | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Motherthing | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Normal Women | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Ainsley Hogarth is a horror and literary fiction novelist who is best known as the author of the bestselling domestic horror fiction novel “Motherthing.”
The novel that came out in 2022 would become a bestselling title almost immediately following its publication.
In her earlier years, Ainsley Hogarth went to college where she got her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and English. She would then proceed to the University of Auckland where she got a Creative Writing master’s degree.
She credits her master’s degree for shaping most of her writing. For Hogarth, getting a creative writing degree made her come to acknowledge that she needed to take herself seriously as a writer and take it as a full-time job without any embarrassment.
According to the author, artists have always been embarrassed about pouring themselves into their art and having a glimmer of hope that they would one day earn a living from it.
It was from taking the MFA that, she finally had a shift in perspective. This was just what she needed to begin digging in and finish the many projects that she had started over the years that had then stalled.
As for her publishing journey, Ainsley Hogarth began writing in 2010. She had then penned about sixty pages of the manuscript of what would become “The Lonely.”
It was this manuscript that she would submit as part of her application for the University of Auckland’s Creative writing graduate program. It was while she was doing her thesis at university that she completed writing it as part of her thesis.
She was very lucky that she had a cousin who was good friends with an agent who agreed to take on as a client. By 2014, she published “Lonely” her debut novel, and has never looked back since.
As a full-time author, Ainsley Hogarth now spends much of her time at her desk at home, penning her novels while listening to lyric-less music played super loud.
When she is not writing her novels, she can usually be found reading horror fiction. She particularly loves Scott Smith’s works such as “The Ruins,” which she has read over and over.
This is not surprising since she has always been a horror fiction author, even if she has dabbled in literary fiction from time to time.
She sometimes communicates with her readers through the newsletter on her website and on her Twitter profile.
“Motherthing” by Ainslie Hogarth is a funny and dark domestic horror fiction work that tells the story of a woman forced to take drastic measures to save herself and her husband from the vengeance-seeking ghost of her mother-in-law.
When Abby and Ralph Lamb had moved in with Laura her mother-in-law, she hoped it was just what they needed to connect as in-laws.
Following a traumatic childhood, she needs a mother figure desperately, especially now that she is trying for a child with her husband Ralph.
Abby has a lot of love to give to Laura, her husband Ralph, and Mrs. Bondy the resident at the long-term care home where she is employed.
However, Laura does not want to bond with Abby, as she is a cruel and venomous woman who makes life for her daughter-in-law hell. When Laura commits suicide, the ghost starts haunting Ralph and Abby but in different ways.
Abby is terrorized by a spirit seeking to destroy everything she loves while Ralph is plunged into depression. Making matters worse, Mrs. Bondy’s legal guardian wants to move her from the home, which would leave Abby all alone.
With everything on the line, Abby makes a chilling plan she believes will allow her to break Laura’s hold on the family so that she can rescue Ralph from his tortured mind while allowing Mrs. Bondy to remain at the home.
Nonetheless, the plan will need a lot of determination, some ingenuity, and a unique chicken a la king recipe.
Ainslie Hogarth’s novel “Normal Women” is a comical but very dark story about how female labor is valued so highly and sometimes not so much.
It tells the story of a new mother who finds herself in a dangerous mystery when a controversial entrepreneur who is also a very good friend goes missing.
When Lotte her daughter was born, Dani believed she finally could have a chance to stay at home and take care of her kids.
She thinks that this is the chance to be good at something but then she just cannot stop fearing that Clark her very healthy husband could just drop dead.
The thing is if she lost her husband, she would most certainly be left destitute alongside Lotte her newborn kid.
But then Dani discovers The Temple, a yoga center, and Renatsa, the guardian is committed to helping practitioners achieve their full potential. For some people, this could be sex work.
Dani has finally stumbled upon something she can be great at which she strongly believes will provide some independence from Clark and protect her and Lotte from poverty in case of anything bad happens.
But just as she was preparing to take the opportunity, Renata goes missing and she soon realizes that she is very good at investigative work.
“The Boy Meets Girl Massacre” by Ainslie Hogarth is an interesting work that tells the story of Noelle. She has just taken a job at the infamous “Boy Meets Girl Inn” and will be working the night shift for the summer.
She knows all about the grisly murders that had been reported at the inn several decades earlier but that will not deter her. Instead, she is keeping a diary so that she can put down everything she experiences while working at the inn.
However, she just cannot explain the freezing drafts, the rotten flesh smell that keeps following her, and the constant misplacement of personal items, even if this hardly scares her.
She has bigger problems on her plate including taking care of her father who is ailing, Alfred her best friend’s inappropriate crush, and the painful spot on her head that gets worse with each passing day.
When a party to commemorate the anniversary of the original killing results in a bizarre bloodbath, Noelle’s diary is the key piece of evidence the investigators need.
However, the incoherent and often cryptic entries suggest that there could be more to the ghoulish case that you could explain with logic.