Gothic

Adelaide Brindamour is dreading the thought of a husband. That he'll neither understand nor appreciate her ability to communicate with ghosts goes without saying. When a mysterious, blue-bearded gentleman appears at Madame Gossard's summer house party, however, the thought of matrimony becomes a bit more tempting. But when a whirlwind love affair turns into a daring elopement, Adelaide may find herself in for a bit more mystery—and murder—than she was prepared for.

My name is Amethyst DeMille, and I'm in love with a vampire. Sounds complicated, doesn't it? Yet the fact that he's a sexy, centuries-old blood-drinking vampire isn't what makes our relationship complicated. It's because we live in the same house together, work at the same exclusive club together, and he happens to be my best friend with absolutely no idea how I feel about him.

On the day of her wedding to the Crown Prince, Aveline is cursed for helping the wrong person. Not entirely a ghost, she is in between, having no control over what form she takes at any given moment. To break it, Aveline is forced to turn to the man she helped: the ostracised Magic Collector. Sebastian, known to everyone else as The Magic Collector, is shrouded in mystery. His castle disappears, sometimes for months, and then reappears without warning.

Cruelty is his middle name, and I'm at his mercy. My father has kept me locked away in an ivory tower. I thought he wanted to protect me, but he only wanted to protect his asset. An untouched, sheltered mob princess is worth a lot of money to the right buyer. My father's greed means Sicily is no longer big enough for him. I'm shipped across the Atlantic to Boston to marry a man I've never met, whose reputation for cruelty reaches as far as the shores of Sicily.

All Things Seen and Unseen follows Alex Nguyen, an isolated, chronically ill university student in her early 20s. After a suicide attempt and subsequent lengthy hospitalization, she finds herself without a job, kicked out of campus housing, unable to afford school, and still struggling in the aftermath of a relationship’s dissolution. Hope comes in the form of a rich high school friend who offers Alex a job housesitting at her family’s empty summer mansion on a gulf island.

Joni Blackwood is my best friend. She was there for my first crush, stood beside me at my wedding, watched my daughter grow up. She's been there through the painful mess of the divorce, too. So when she suddenly goes missing on All Gallows' Eve, I'm first to raise the alarm. My mum used to say this village was built on the roots of The Gallows Tree, that they're underneath the ground, under all of our houses. It used to scare me as a kid. Thick, snaking roots squirming under me. No matter how far you ran, they could tunnel after you.

When a copycat murderer prowls among the trees of Ponderosa Springs, our loyalty is tested. It had been foolish of us to believe our revenge would go unpunished. That the town wouldn't retaliate after what we did. With our lives hanging in the balance, Thatcher and I have no choice but to coexist. In the twilight of musty cabins and haunted library towers, my somber secrets are exposed, and his cravings are revealed. So the question is . . . What is love without obsession?

Driven by the glory he'll earn from the Royal Horticultural Society for such an achievement, Gregor ignores the flaws in his plan: that intelligence cannot be controlled; that plants cannot be reasoned with; and that the only way his plant-beast will flourish is if he uses a recently deceased corpse for the substrate. The experiment-or Chloe, as she is named-outstrips even Gregor's expectations, entangling their strange household. But as Gregor's experiment flourishes, he wilts under the cost of keeping it hidden from jealous eyes.

Hundreds of years ago, she was known as La Malinche: a Nahua woman who translated for the conquistador Cortés. In the centuries since, her name has gone down in infamy as a traitor. But no one ever found out what happened to La Malinche after Cortés destroyed her people. In the ashes of the empire, she was reborn as Malinalli, an immortal vampire. And she has become an avenger of conquered peoples, traveling the world to reclaim their stolen artifacts and return them to their homelands. But she has also been in search of something more.

Sibilla Fenoglio wants nothing more than to live with her husband in this run-down, derelict watermill. Uninhabited since the Renaissance after a mysterious disaster befell the previous owners, the mill requires extensive repairs. But there is something frightening about the mill. Repairs are violently undone, half-seen figures begin stalking Sibilla through the grounds, and haunting echoes of the previous owners’ lives infiltrate the present. As the disturbances grow more vicious and her husband more secretive, she realizes that she and her child are in danger.

The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd—spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist—accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past—riddled with grief and shame—has never seemed so far away. But then Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun.

In 1948, Irene Willard, who’s had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to “rectify the maternal environment,” both physical and psychological. In the meantime, she also discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls.

I made a mistake. Hearts are the most fragile part of the body, and I trusted mine with Jude Carlisle. My villain. My weakness. My stepbrother. Fairytales have a way of turning the most innocent things wicked. Jude lied through his teeth, and I fell for every word. Then he burned both our families to the ground in a sick game of revenge and never looked back.

Barry has now been through it all during his short time as a reincarnated, magical, evolving blueberry. Mushroom zombie monsters, a full-scale war with a hive of wasps, the death of the king, and now an adventure through the insides of a dead God's corpse. After narrowly surviving his most recent encounter, Barry is finally ready to explore his second tier race and his brand new upgraded class.

Desperation drives me into the hands of a dangerous predator. I never should have considered auctioning off my innocence. The men who bid are the darkest kind, the ones you never want to encounter. And Malachy, the man who bought me, is no exception. He wins me, locking me away in his world. Selling my virginity takes on a whole new meaning, one I never anticipated. I expected one night with my buyer, but with Malachy McCarthy, I'm his possession until he decides otherwise. I'm nothing but a toy, a plaything for his amusement, until he grows bored.