How bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice. Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are―gasp―fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point? Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture―and society―is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

Daphne du Maurier's occasional volumes of short stories have always shown how compellingly she can make our flesh creep (think of the brilliant 'The Birds', and that truly horrifying story 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger'). This new collection, which contains five long stories, makes exactly the same stunning, sinister impact. Not After Midnight-the title gives warning that here are no cosy tales for reading to a maiden aunt or an elderly cousin. Venice... Crete... Ireland... Jerusa- lem... East Anglia: the settings are as varied as the plots. A married couple enjoying a holiday in Venice are swept helplessly into a tragedy played out against a back-drop of murky canals and back- alleys. A middle-aged schoolmaster gets involved with an American couple whose fishing expeditions are very far from being what they appear. A young actress, setting out on an impulsive but innocent quest, blunders into a situation which sweeps away all the roots of her youthful self- confidence. One story, subtly mocking, follows the vicissitudes of an ill-assorted little party of pilgrims in Jerusalem; another explores the meaning of life and death in a brilliantly original tale. Such unremarkable people, following their unexceptionable paths-yet all caught up in situations beyond the boun- daries of their experience and outside their control. Compelling, exciting, this collec- tion shows once again what mastery of the short story Daphne du Maurier has.

I’ve never been a good bet. I wear my emotions on my tattoo-covered sleeve, I say all the wrong things and I revel in pissing off a certain redhead far more than I should. In other words, I’m the last person the court would choose to parent any child, let alone three of them. Yet being their father is all I want. So when the woman I love to hate offers to help make all my dreams come true, I jump at the chance. Marrying Ava is a convenient solution: she's my kids favorite person and the court will absolutely approve of the woman who runs the biggest charity in Boston. But there is nothing convenient about the way I feel when she fights with me, or when we kiss. And I'm not sure which I enjoy more. This marriage may have a time limit but I'm beginning to think I'd like to keep my wife. She’ll probably fight me on it, but as they say, all’s fair in love and war.

Mountains have deep, dark hearts, and those hearts are carved by water. Deep in the shadowed hollers of Appalachia, Rhia Blackburn has always kept her powers and her heart buried. Around here, the river whispers dark secrets, the earth remembers every cut, and survival is a skill women pass down in blood. But when her cousin Amey is kidnapped up the mountain, Rhia is forced to confront the terror of her home and her own troubled history. To save her, Rhia must trust her powers—and herself—because in Appalachia, family comes first and water always finds a way. An Appalachian horror novella about family, grief, and the stubborn strength it takes to survive.