This razor blade of a novel tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her frosty and bitter Great Granny. The titular relation is rich and stingy, and prefers her freezing-cold house perfectly silent, too. The cast of characters is rounded out with Great Granny Webster's devoted, one-eyed housemaid Richards, and the narrator's flighty and wild Aunt Lavinia, who was famous for showing up to a party wearing nothing but a sanitary towel. Blackwood herself was an heir to the Guinness

—Emma Straub