Shannon Morgan | An unnerving, hypnotic, modern gothic thriller

What is the title of your latest release?
A PENANCE FOR CROWS

What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
An unnerving, hypnotic, modern gothic thriller set on a remote Irish island, where an artist is caught between deadly secrets, ancient superstition, and echoing madness.

How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
While I was driving around the Beara Peninsula in Ireland a few years ago.

Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Absolutely. Grizela is a bit of an oddball, and I’ve always been drawn to quirky people.

What are three words that describe your hero?
loyal, damaged, protective.

What’s something you learned while writing this book?
A lot about diabolical signatures and Irish folklore.

Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I wait until I’ve finished the first draft. After that I put it to one side for a few months (sometimes years), then come back to it with fresh eyes.

What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Cheese

Describe your writing space/office!
A study with a Victorian desk (a gift from my husband that I love!), bookcases, piles of books, and mood boards for my current WIP.

Who is an author you admire?
Terry Pratchett.

Is there a book that changed your life?
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS

Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was the most nerve-wracking, exciting moment of my life. While in the query trenches, the author is always trying to sell themselves and their books to an agent, but in the call with an editor (or an agent), they are trying to sell themselves to you, and that is quite a mental shift.

What’s your favorite genre to read?
Gothic mystery and thrillers

What’s your favorite movie?
Shawshank Redemption

What is your favorite season?
I have no favorites. Each season has something I love.

How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I prefer not to.

What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
ONE OF US KNOWS by Alyssa Cole.

What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Italian

What do you do when you have free time?
Read or travel.

What can readers expect from you next?
More gothic novels, plus I’m branching out into whodunits and thrillers.

A PENANCE FOR CROWS by Shannon Morgan

An unnerving, hypnotic, modern gothic thriller set on a remote Irish island, where an artist is caught between deadly secrets, ancient superstition, and echoing madness . . .

Off the southern tip of the Beara Peninsula lies Beanna Dubh, an island of savage beauty, its jagged cliffs lashed by Atlantic winds and infested by thousands of crows. Untouched by 21st-century advances, the islanders live under the strict rule of the church, while clinging to old superstitions of the crows as harbingers of disaster. To this desolate, unforgiving place Grizela Urquhart fled, seeking sanctuary from brutal bullying in her native Glasgow.  

40 years on, Grizela still remains an outsider—the eccentric painter viewed with distrust and barely tolerated. The feelings are mutual, for she has discovered there are as many secrets on Beanna Dubh as there are crows. 

When she stumbles upon the body of a young priest with a diabolical symbol drawn on his chest, the crows darken the skies, and Grizela is plagued by demonic whispers only she can hear. The islanders’ suspicions fall on her, but she fears the answers lie in her tortured past.  

As mass hysteria grows, Grizela scrambles to protect the innocent—a quartet of young girls she has taken under her wing. When she uncovers dark truths behind the girls’ mysterious midnight gatherings, her grip on reality unravels and she is faced with an impossible choice: do the unthinkable to protect the girls as the whispers urge, or come out of hiding to face the sins of her past.

Horror | Suspense Gothic [ Kensington, On Sale: July 28, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781496757982 / eISBN: 9781496757999 ]

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About Shannon Morgan

Shannon Morgan has had a nomadic past, involving, but not limited to, nearly being shot in Kashmir, playing a marathon ten-hour game of backgammon on the side of a road in Turkey, getting horribly sea-sick off the coast of Madagascar and milking a camel in the Sahara Desert. She now lives with her husband and sons in Wiltshire, England.

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