Part One: the founding mothers. Margaret Cavendish: Mad Madge ; Ann Radcliffe: Terror over horror ; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The original goth girl ; Regina Maria Roche: Scandalizing Jane Austen ; Mary Anne Radcliffe: Purveyor of guts and gore ; Charlotte Dacre: Exhibitor of murder and harlotry
Part two: haunting tales. Elizabeth Gaskell: Ghosts are real ; Charlotte Riddell: Born storyteller ; Amelia Edwards: The most learned woman ; Paula E. Hopkins: The most productive writer ; Vernon Lee: Ghostwriter a la garconne ; Margaret Oliphant: Voice for the dead ; Edith Wharton: The spine-tingler
Part three: Cult of the occult. Marjorie Bowen: Scribe of the supernatural ; L.T. Meade: Maker of female masterminds ; Alice Askew: Casualty of war ; Margery Lawrence: Speaker to the spirits ; Dion Fortune: Britian's psychic defender
Part four: The women who wrote the pulps. Margaret St. Clair: Exploring our depths ; Catherine Lucille Moore: Space vamp queen ; Mary Elizabeth Counselman: Deep south storyteller ; Gertrude Barrows Bennett: Seer of the unseen ; Everil Worrell: Night writer ; Eli Colter: Keeping the wild west weird
Part five: Haunting the home. Dorothy Macardle: Chronicler of pain and loss ; Shirley Jackson: The queen of horror ; Daphne du Maurier: The dame of dread ; Toni Morrison: Haunted by history ; Elizabeth Engstrom: Monstrosity in the mundane
Part six: Paperback horror. Joanne Fischmann: Recipes for fear ; Ruby Jean Jensen: Where evil meets innocence ; V.C. Andrews: Nighmares in the attic ; Kathe Koja: Kafka of the weird ; Lisa Tuttle: Adversary for the devil ; Tanith Lee: rewriting Snow White
Part seven: The new goths. Anne rice: Queen of the damned ; Helen Oycycmi: Teller of feminist fairy tales ; Susan Hill: Modern gothic ghost maker ; Sarah Waters: Welcome to the dark seance ; Angela Carter: Teller of bloody fables ; Jewelle Gomez: Afrofuturist horrorist
Part eight: The future of horror and speculative fiction. The new weird: Lovecraft revisited and revised ; The new vampire: Polishing the fangs ; The new haunted house: Home, deadly home ; The new apocalypse: this is the end (again) ; The new serial killer: Sharper weapons, sharper victims.
