English Gothic

Legend tells of a sacred land shrouded by the obscure, where the barrier between worlds is thin, and strange things happen without rhyme or reason. Mila, a budding violinist, is unaware of these myths when she accepts a job at a remote inn called the Dawn. Awed by the atmospheric location, Mila begins work, only to discover nothing is as it seems. Haunted by unsettling vestiges, mysterious disappearances, and the lure of a magical song, Mila takes it upon herself to unravel the secrets of the inn. And its handsome innkeeper.

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive Doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits. A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel.

Audrina remembers a better time, when her husband, Arden, was a young man with a heart filled with devotion for her. He didn't used to be this ambitious, this expansive...this cruel. But then, the death of Aurdina's father changed a great many things. When the reading of her father's will reveals that Audrina herself will control 51 percent of the family brokerage, the halls of Whitefern again don't feel safe. Arden's protestations become frantic, nearly violent.

Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world.

After a harrowing otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive - only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown....

Portrait of the Medical Student as a Young Body Snatcher. Yet I must insist that in the end, this is not a story about Death. It is perhaps a Life story, or even—yes—a Love story. It is the story of how I clawed my way from the decay of a crumbling legacy into the modern era of Reason and Science. It is the story of how I escaped the prison of archaic superstition to the freedom of enlightenment. It is the story of how a rose can blossom from even the bloodiest soil, of how light can grow from shadow, how love can grow from despair.

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

Audrina fiercely desired to be as good as her sister. She knew her father could not love her as he loved that other girl, for her sister was so special, so perfect - and dead. Upstairs in a locked room awaited her sister's clothes and dolls, her animals and games - and her sacred rocking chair. Now Audrina will rock and rock and rock to reclaim all of her gone sister's special gifts.

I came back to Forsyth and agreed to be their Lady for two reasons: protection and revenge. They wanted to break me, but instead, they molded me into their perfect weakness. I was put through the gauntlet and came out stronger. I earned the title of Lady. Then they became my weakness. I agreed to sleep under their roof, but on my terms. Building trust takes time, but with all the threats nipping at our heels, that’s a luxury we don't have. We have to rely on one another despite our complicated pasts - to find a murderer, a stalker, and a traitor.

Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone—for how many hours?—in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll.

I’m one of four Willow daughters. He’s the first-born son of the Scafoni family. And we have history. For generations, the Scafoni family have demanded a sacrifice of us. A virgin daughter to atone for sins so old, we don’t even remember what they are anymore. But when you have as much money as they do, you don’t play by the rules. You make them. And Sebastian Scafoni makes all the rules. The moment I saw him, I knew he would choose me. Even though the mark on my sheath declared me unclean.

The grand, Gothic Wyndemere House is a labyrinth, containing as many secrets as it does corners obscured in shadow. It's home to the Davenports, a wealthy and distinguished family, and Fern Corey and her mother have lived there as servants for Fern’s entire young life. Despite their difference in station, Fern and Dr. Davenport’s son, Ryder, have always been extremely close. Which was never a problem...until they came of age.

One of the most popular storytellers of all time, V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, My Sweet Audrina) continues an astonishing saga of psychological suspense with this third book of the Landry Family series - soon to be a Lifetime movie! Driven from the ornate Dumas Mansion back to her beloved bayou, Ruby struggles to begin her life anew in this atmospheric and thrilling novel.

Alone in the world, Elspeth Swansome takes the position of nanny to a family on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea. Her charge, Mary, hasn’t uttered a word since the sudden death of her twin, William—just days after their former nanny disappeared. No one will speak of what happened to William. Just as no one can explain the hypnotic lullabies sung in empty corridors. Or the strange dolls that appear in abandoned rooms. Or the faint whistling that comes in the night . . .

The time is 1902. The setting, eastern Oregon. Magic Child, a 15-year-old Native American girl, wanders into the wrong whorehouse looking for the right men. She finds Cameron and Greer, two gunmen taking a timeout from the game after an aborted job in Hawaii. Their violent past doesn't concern Magic Child. She wants them to kill a monster for her, one she says lives in the ice caves under the basement of Miss Hawkline's yellow house, and one she says has killed before. But the more she tells them about the monster, the more her story unravels.

The Ultimate Gothic Horror Collection is a fully indexed collection of classic gothic stories, read by four Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.

St. Vincent's Orphanage for Boys. Turn of the century, in a remote valley in Pennsylvania. Here, under the watchful eyes of several priests, thirty boys work, learn, and worship. Peter Barlow, orphaned as a child by a gruesome murder, has made a new life here. As he approaches adulthood, he has friends, a future...a family. Then, late one stormy night, a group of men arrive at their door, one of whom is badly wounded, occult symbols carved into his flesh. His death releases an ancient evil that spreads like sickness, infecting St. Vincent's and the children within.

Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy, and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor, and awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea's charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted by the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea.