We’re deep inside a rainforest somewhere near the border of Mexico and Guatemala, 1972. Simon Corbet, a 42-year-old entomologist with a passion for mantids, has been drawn here. Or is he running away? Running from grief, uncertainty, and a guilt he doesn't understand. Simon is haunted, both figuratively and literally, by the ghost of Penelope, a young woman who tragically died. Michelle Paver's Rainforest was hot off the press right at the end of 2025. We talk about where it lies in her oeuvre.

Michelle Paver's 2019 novel, set in Suffolk fenland, explores medieval superstition and patriarchal religion. To daughter, Maud, struggling for freedom, the fen is about inspiration and release. To father Edmund it is the home of a demon who seeks to punish him for a long-forgotten sin. Woven through the story is local folklore about exorcism and the entrapment of evil. The novel updates a number of themes common to the Edwardian ghost story, breathing new life into the genre.

Running parallel to the dapper, handsome count of stage and screen, this alternative take on the noble vampire -- bald, hunched, rat-toothed -- has haunted cinema history for more than a century, starting with F.W. Murnau's unauthorized 1922 use of Bram Stoker's story. Three Nosferatus cast their folk horror-ish shadows over the vampire genre, Murnau's, Werner Herzog's 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampire, and, most recently, Robert Eggers's 2024 production. How do they relate to each other and, just as interestingly, how do they relate to Stoker's 1897 novel?