Publication Date: July 28, 2026
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. For fans of Simone St. James, Eve Chase, and Jennifer McMahon.
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.
A quiet Irish town descends into chaos in A Penance for Crows by Shannon Morgan.
Grizela Urquhart enjoys her quiet life on Beanna Dubh. Painting by night and enjoying the warmth of her small cottage, her life is her ideal. However, when Grizela finds the body of a young priest, everything turns on its head. Soon, demonic markings are turning up around town, and with them, dead bodies. Grizela’s past comes back to haunt her as she fights to protect a group of young girls before the town descends into chaos.
I was impressed by how Morgan was able to walk the line between gothic mystery and psychological thriller. I loved getting a glimpse into Grizela’s mind, seeing her slowly blur the line between reality and fantasy. While I did see the ending coming, seeing how the story brought you to the conclusion was so engaging. Morgan knows how to use folklore and setting to weave a gothic tone that moved the story seamlessly.
A Penance for Crows is a twisting and thrilling gothic mystery that balances folklore and reality to create a story that makes you question everything.
Shannon Morgan has had a nomadic life involving, but not limited to, nearly being shot in Kashmir, playing a marathon 10-hour game of backgammon on the side of the road in Turkey, getting horribly seasick off the coast of Madagascar and milking a camel in the Sahara Desert. More recently, she spends her time with her husband and their four unruly boys in Wiltshire, England, where she collects a worrying number of unusual and rather macabre plants, many of them poisonous as they tend to produce the most interestingly weird flowers.
Shannon is the author of Her Little Flowers, In the Lonely Hours and Grimdark. Her upcoming release is A Penance for Crows, use in 2026.
