Historical Horror Fiction

As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her...

In seventeenth-century Paris, nineteen-year-old Catherine Monvoisin is a well-heeled jeweler’s wife with a peculiar taste for the arcane. She lives a comfortable life, far removed from a childhood of abject destitution—until her kind spendthrift of a husband lands them both in debt. Hell-bent on avoiding a return to poverty, Catherine must rely on her prophetic visions and the grimoire gifted to her by a talented diviner to reinvent herself as a sorceress. With the help of the grifter Marie Bosse, Catherine divines fortunes in the Île de la Cité—home to sorcerers and scoundrels.

If you have found this booklet, I am hopefully already dead, buried next to my father and mother, within spitting distance of Thomas, Elsie, and Sally Somers. And, though it is called the Gilley Burying Ground, my father would be irked (when was he not?) to lie for eternity next to the neighbors he so despised. Though I wanted to understand his feelings, I wanted even more to understand the Somers, whose exploits in Southwest Harbor were the subject of so much scrutiny and conjecture, but whose daily lives were full of earnest hard work.

In 17th-century Hungary, Anna Darvulia has just begun working as a scullery maid for the young and glamorous Countess Elizabeth Báthory. When Elizabeth takes a liking to Anna, she’s vaulted to the dream role of chambermaid, a far cry from the filthy servants’ quarters below. She receives wages generous enough to provide for her family, and the Countess begins to groom Anna as her friend and confidante. It’s not long before Anna falls completely under the Countess’s spell—and the Countess takes full advantage.

It is the turn of the century in an England that never was. Bright new aqua-plants are generating electricity for the streetlights; news can be easily had on the radio-viz; and in Gundisalvus' Land, the war is over and the soldiers are beginning to trickle home. Amongst these is Lt. Benjamin Braddock, survivor of the massacre that ended the war, and begrudgingly ready to return to a world that, well, doesn't seem to need him any more than it did in peacetime.

Sparks fly when bitter exes are forced to team up for an elaborate Feywild heist, in this cozy fantasy romance by the bestselling author of the Kingston Cycle and Even Though I Knew the End. Saeldian has sworn never to fall in love. That oath isn’t just a personal promise, but rather a magical...

This fourth installment includes the biggest Drummond tale yet, a new love for our favorite detective, and plenty of new troubles. In here you’ll find stories tragic and comic, thrilling, frightening, action-packed, and even a little romantic. Basically, you’ll find all the reasons Marshall Drummond is one of the greatest detectives of the strange and bizarre, and one that you’ll keep coming back to again and again.

Nine-year-old Olivia Friel is delighted to be spending the summer at Greyfriars House, a place where her parents, their family and friends are always happy. But this year there's an underlying tension that Olivia doesn't understand. Then one night she sees something she's not meant to, and accidentally lets slip a devastating betrayal. Charlotte Friel gets a call from her ailing mother, asking something she's never asked before: for Charlotte to come home. There are things Olivia needs to tell her daughter before it's too late, secrets to be shared about forgotten relatives and a mysterious house.

When David stumbles upon a tragic young woman in a sordid Limehouse pub, he has no idea she’d recognize him as the last vampyre alive, nor that she’d be the one to pull out his story. Yet as he recalls his life from the sweltering vineyards of ancient Rome to the cold horrors of medieval Romania—as well as his tumultuous past with the mad and mysterious Lucius—he realizes she is much more than what she seems. Gothic horror and mythological fantasy blend seamlessly together in this thrilling adventure, breathing new life into vampire lore as it reveals its true origins.

Sharp Objects meets William Kent Kreuger in this new searing southern mystery from acclaimed author Lo Patrick. When her granddaughter is accused of murder, a woman must confront the buried secrets of a summer long past—because she can try to forget, but the Georgia land remembers. Meg Gregory...

STARDEW VALLEY meets STUDIO GHIBLI in a charming cozy fantasy about healing, redemption, and the subtle magic of simple living. Perfect for fans of Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea and The Spellshop. Welcome home, weary traveler. When Oaklin Nettlewood accidentally joined an evil world-ending...

Everyone's favorite vampire odd couple is back for another bloody good time in this new supernatural mystery from the authors of Dead & Breakfast. Arthur Miller (no relation to the playwright) and his beloved, Salvatore Conte, are settling into their (para)normal lives in Trident Falls. Finally...

In this gripping debut, steeped in Welsh folklore, a husband and wife living in the beautiful but isolated mountains of Snowdonia stumble upon a buried Neolithic ruin—awakening a mysterious, ancient presence with its own dark designs. “A sumptuously written, chilling folk horror novel.”...

You have solved the kickoff puzzle. There will be five additional puzzles to solve. Players have five minutes to confirm PIN after locating the final solution. The Enigma Challenge begins now. An action-packed novel following an unlikely duo as they race across Europe in a dangerously...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns with his first stand-alone novel since Chances Are . . . —a spellbinding page-turner about a crime in a small town that exposes long-held secrets and betrayals among a group of lifelong friends. When Tyler Sinclair left Stone Mountain...

A brilliant but restless dancer discovers the true meaning of love and intimacy through the ebbs and flows of her marriage in this exquisitely written novel—from the bestselling author and psychologist whose feminist classic, In a Different Voice, revolutionized our understanding of women’s...

From New York Times best-selling authors and illustrators Mike Mignola and Tom Sniegoski come two thrilling antiheroes: Grim Death and Bill the Electrocuted Criminal, battling against crime. An uneasiness festers upon the city streets, threatening the peace and safety of law-abiding citizens. A war is escalating, and it seems as though the good and righteous are being crushed beneath the unholy weight of evil's onslaught.

In 19th-century Paris, Justin Trotter, an immigrant from England, is making his way as a book translator while paying for his blind twin sister’s care. One evening, Marc Noël, Justin’s well-to-do friend and fellow thespian, invites him to a masquerade party at an abandoned schoolhouse. Justin hopes this will be an opportunity to get to know Marc’s lovely though sharp-tongued sister Francine.

Susan Hill meets Alfred Hitchcock in Alison Littlewood's latest chiller. Asylum doctor Nathaniel is obsessed with the beautiful Mrs Harleston - but is she truly delusional? Or is she hiding secrets that should never be uncovered? Haunted by his father's suicide, Nathaniel walks away from the highly prestigious life of a consultant to become an asylum doctor. He takes up a position at Crakethorne Asylum, but the proprietor is more interested in phrenology and his growing collection of skulls than the patients' minds.

The year is 1911. In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal - with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all. Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother's cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation - and the barest thread of hope.