Victorian Horror

Victorian England, 1891. The escape of reading had saved the pathetic life of the orphaned Naomi Gladwyn. However, when she learns of books that are responsible for taking lives, everything she knows changes. Approaching her 18th birthday with only the grim prospect of living out her days in a workhouse, Naomi makes the boldest decision of her life and runs away. With only the whisper of a plan, she soon finds herself swept up into the dark world of The Book Reapers - a secret society that knows there is more to some books than meets the eye.

Before Twilight and True Blood, even before Buffy and Anne Rice and Bela Lugosi, vampires haunted the 19th century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel, Dracula. Michael Sims brings together the very best vampire stories of the Victorian era - from England, America, France, Germany, Transylvania, and even Japan - into a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety.

Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman perilously close to spinsterhood whose distinctly unpleasant father is trying to marry her off. She is awkward, plain, and most pertinently, believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck. Iseult’s father parades a host of unsuitable candidates before her, the majority of whom Iseult wastes no time frightening away. When at last her father finds a suitor desperate enough to take Iseult off his hands - a man whose medical treatments have turned his skin silver - a true comedy of errors ensues.

In the year 1843, embittered Afghan War veteran John Sparrowhawk is released from the debtors’ prison by the beautiful and enigmatic Miss Evangeline. Penniless and alone in the world, he takes employment with his mysterious benefactor, agreeing to stand guard over a house in Bloomsbury for the duration of that December. The task sounds simple, but in fact is anything but.

Branded an outcast by the noble branch of his werewolf clan, Cort Renier had come to San Francisco seeking fortune—and revenge. What he found was a mysterious beauty who could not—or would not—reveal who she truly was. At first glance she seemed vulnerable and afraid, like so many girls caught up in the debauchery of the city's whiskey-soaked gambling dens. But one look into her stunning turquoise eyes and he knew he'd found the winning hand.

Clara grew up believing that her mother's family had disowned them. But the grandmother Clara never knew is now entreating her to visit Thurnley Hall, the family seat in Yorkshire. The old lady is on her deathbed and anxious to disclose vital family secrets before it's too late - for Clara's unborn child may be cursed with a horrible fate.

In the first of a brand-new series set in Victorian England, a young woman returns home from India after the death of her family to discover her identity and inheritance are challenged by the man who holds her future in his hands.

Welcome to the Gothic London of the 1800s. These saucy tales quicken the pulse, thrill the mind, and excite parts of the body that other, lesser books fail to reach. Short stories featured in this sweet confection of blood, sex, and Gothic melodrama include "Holmes of the Baskervilles", "Miss Katie Bell - Victorian Vampire", "Joan Dark Is Lost", and "The Vampire Alice Through the Looking Glass". Here, vampires walk the streets and your favorite characters from Victorian literature are twisted until they snap.

Celia Renton, a poor relation, is summoned to Sorrowmoor, a gloomy estate owned by her cousin, Connall Rothwell. But all is not well at the house. A mysterious death of the master's brother, a master with demons, and a deadly enemy await Celia. Even as her heart is torn with mistrust of the master of the house, danger lurks behind handmade dolls and treacherous smiles. Will Celia live to learn the secrets of Sorrowmoor?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book that changed the world. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and a movie starring Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley, Monster is a brilliant fictionalized biography akin to The Other Boleyn Girl. Two centuries ago this year, the young woman who invented science fiction was only 20 when she wrote the book that became Frankenstein. Mary Shelley said, “People ask how I, then a young girl, could think of, and dilate upon, so hideous subject?”

From the author of the Amazon best-seller The Soul Collector comes a real life story of terror and intrigue. When Edwin Gonzalez and Lillian Otero purchased the historic S.K. Pierce Victorian Mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts, in 2009, they scoffed at the ghostly legends surrounding the house. They didn't believe in ghosts. The house soon proved them wrong. By the fall of 2011, they were forced from their house, narrowly escaping with their lives.

Clayton Barbour, the narrator, is a protected bourgeois son just weak enough to allow himself to be overwhelmed by a sly, dissembling force of evil, just strong enough to be constantly tormented by his weakness. Invited to a séance by a casual acquaintance, Moore, who sees in him a psychic force, he becomes the inadvertent victim of Moore's wife's contact with a channeled malignant force.

Katherine O'Donnell was born with a disfiguring strawberry birthmark across the bottom of her face. In 1880s London, that was enough to discourage suitors. Love was something for which she yearned, but never found within her reach. Out of necessity, she became adept at hiding inside her home and behind makeups she formulated and applied herself. When tragedy upended her modest life and dumped her out onto the streets, she was bereft of options. She answered an advertisement for a mortuary assistant.

An old man lives in a Victorian house alone. Or so he thinks. When he visits his basement, he is literally haunted by his past.

"For the love of God, cut off my head." The last request in Uncle Silas's will shocks everyone speechless, everyone except his favorite niece, Anna. More than death itself, the claustrophobic Silas fears a premature burial. Will her elders carry out his request? Anna is certain they will not. It's up to her to do the right thing, even if it is a bit grisly. Armed with butcher knife and candle, Anna heads for the crypt underneath the church in the dead of night. All does not go according to Anna's careful planning.

A Polish historian visiting Italy falls in love with a 16th-century femme fatale, who murdered a series of enthralled husbands and lovers. When he experiences visions of the beautiful Medea Da Carpi, it slowly turns his scholarly fascination into a fatal obsession.

Keen to improve his prospects, a man impersonates a fellow traveller who had changed his mind about an engagement to a wealthy young woman. But he begins to regret his decision when he learns every suitor must face an unknown horror that the family has harboured for generations.

The American Otis family moves into the old English country house Canterville Chase. They are warned that the house is haunted before they move in but are unconcerned at first. They soon accept that the ghost is real but are not frightened by it. The ghost, who had been frightening all those who stayed at Canterville Chase for 300 years, takes the Americans' unwillingness to be scared by him as a great insult. He grows to despise them all, except for the teenage daughter, Virginia, who he feels is different from the rest of her family.

How do you know if you’ve seen a ghost? Maybe you’ll never know. But an American couple seeking an idyllic retirement in and English country house do find out...eventually. Afterward is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

While a door that just won’t stay closed may not seem like the most terrifying of hauntings, being alone in a silent manor for days on end certainly adds to the atmosphere. A request to discover the reason for the obstinate door includes a cash motivation and newly unemployed Theophilus Edlyd readily accepts the challenge.