Victorian Psycho

By Virginia Feito

From the author of Sunday Times bestseller Mrs. March comes a gruesome and gleeful new novel that probes the psyche of a bloodthirsty governess in Victorian England.

‘Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny’ CATRIONA WARD

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning. Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.

‘Riotous, devilishly clever and deliciously appalling’ PAUL TREMBLAY

Format: Hardback
Release Date: 13 Feb 2025
Pages: 144
ISBN: 978-0-00-873959-1
Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She worked as a copywriter until she quit to write her debut novel. She lives in Madrid.

”'Simmering with rage, propulsive and laugh-out-loud funny, Victorian Psycho speaks profoundly of horror both within and without us. Virginia Feito seems to have invented an entirely new kind of storytelling. This novel is nothing less than a masterpiece” - Catriona Ward, bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street

”'Riotous, devilishly clever, and deliciously appalling, Victorian Psycho is flat out brilliant. Long live Winifred! She is the anti-hero this, or any other, century deserves” - Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie

”'Relentlessly moody in the best possible way, Victorian Psycho asks how anyone could live sanely in a time so systemically cruel. Atmospheric, funny, bloody as hell, I finished it in one sitting” - Ainslie Hogarth, author of Motherthing

Praise for Mrs March: -

”'A brilliantly tense psychological study from a writer who keeps pace with Du Maurier” - Guardian

”'Virginia Feito’s noirish debut novel left me rapt. An elegant, claustrophobic psychological thriller that feels incredibly original” - Evening Standard

”'The atmosphere of queasy foreboding is compelling, as is the portrayal of a flawed, troubled and complex individual trying to keep it together while coming apart at the seams” - Economist

”'Storytelling at its most compelling, sinuous and needle-sharp. Has a plot as skilful as fine clockwork, peopled with characters so vivid I could hear, see and even smell them” - Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street

”'There are shades of Hitchcock and Highsmith here, while the opening chapter puts one in mind of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Nastily good fun” - Metro

”'I read Mrs. March in one sitting and was so captured by it. As a character, she is fascinating, complex, and deeply human” - Elisabeth Moss