Gothic

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.

Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies. But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes.

1999: When successful writer Gillian Larking receives a letter from the nephew of an old friend, she knows that her past has finally caught up with her. Violet Claybourne, her old boarding school roommate, was a girl who captivated Gillian with stories of her charming sisters and their picturesque home at Thornleigh Hall. Violet Claybourne pulled Gillian into her life, into her family, and changed Gilly's path forever. Violet Claybourne also spent the past sixty years in a psych hospital, and now she wants Gillian to tell her story. The real story.

In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their mother. So when a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once solitary lives are irrevocably disrupted.

He is a sinner and never a saint. His words drip with lust. His touch... sinful. That is what girls whisper after one night with him. He even has scratches to prove it. He is powerful, dangerous, and never backs down from a challenge. The pawn? The new girl. He can smell her innocent nature like a piranha smelling blood and won't be satisfied until he has a taste. The problem? He isn't the only one who wants it.

Sarah Toomey is a successful young black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced–and afraid that she is losing her mind. Since the death of her mother, a force she can neither understand nor control is manipulating her memory and driving her to unexplained acts of violence and destruction. At the same time, Sarah is swept up in a highly charged relationship with a work colleague that portends a danger of its own. As she moves through her privileged life in New York, Sarah comes to learn how her past—her haunted history—is intertwined with America’s.

Jane Eyre originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name Currer Bell on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.

There’s something wrong in Renfield County. It’s in the water, the soil, the wood. But worst of all, it’s in the minds of the residents, slowly driving them mad. When Lawrence Renfield massacred his family and drew The Giant in his farmhouse with their blood, no one imagined the repercussions. At the very least, the bloodstained wood should have been set aflame, not chopped down and repurposed as furniture, décor, and heirlooms across the county. But that’s exactly what happened.

A year ago Sophie Wickham stumbled into the isolated Lancashire village of Withered Hill, naked, alone and with no memory of who she is. Surrounded by a thick ring of woodland, its inhabitants seem to be of another world, drenched in pagan, folklorish traditions. As Sophie struggles to regain the memories of her life from before, she quickly realises she is a prisoner after multiple failed escape attempts. But is it the locals who keep her trapped, with smiles on their faces, or something else, lurking in the woods?

Das Hörbuch jetzt als INSZENIERTE LESUNG mit Geräuschen und Musik. Wenn das Licht des Tages stirbt und sich das Totenhemd der Nacht auf Pflastersteine und Asphaltstraßen herabsenkt, geht ein Raunen durch alte Ziegelmauern. Es ist die Zeit des Zwielichts, in welcher die Gebäude im Mondlicht zu träumen beginnen... Die schiefen Palazzi von Venedig flüstern einander längst vergessene Geheimnisse zu. In den verfallenen Häuserblocks von Berlin ertönt ein Wispern. Beide Städte erzählen dem Leser unheimliche Geschichten.

Read by the author, The Long Black Dress is a short tale of gothic horror told by a young woman returning to an empty home after her husband's funeral. In the oppressive and sentient silence of the hollow house, she descends into grief-fueled memories of their relationship and its tragic end, culminating in a haunting ending.

Lady Charlotte is engaged to a Duke she's never met, a union that promises financial security for her struggling family but when her fiancé mysteriously disappears, Charlotte refuses to remain in the dark. Determined to find him, she travels to the isolated Gravewood Manor, only to discover it abandoned, and unnervingly eerie. Trapped by a fierce snowstorm, Charlotte takes refuge at the manor, concealing her true identity under the guise of a simple maid.

I ran as fast as I could, escaping the monster, escaping my personal hell. I wanted freedom, a ray of precious sunlight, yet all I found was darkness. Pitch black consuming darkness. That's until an opportunity arrived, maybe the most dangerous of them all, but the only one that could save me—The Pleasure Room. Heaven and hell dancing in mesmerizing circles.

Summer ends, the season changes, and Coro, an artist frightened off by what her own paintings may represent, gets in her car and drives for hours in the middle of the night until she chances upon Betania, an isolated house existing in a world of its own. It's an unfamiliar place inhabited exclusively by women who, strangely, all seem to know her. Like adherents of an ancient cult, the women of Betania all dress the same, carry out strange rites and celebrations, and live alongside goats and innumerable dogs against a landscape dominated by a mountain that seems to block out the sunlight.

Morgana's world is shattered when her brother vanishes into the sinister badlands of Vespera. Driven by her thirst for answers, she joins the ranks of the Umbran Guard by day, but come night, she takes to the streets in search of the people responsible for his disappearance. When her path crosses with Aster Sinclair, the shadow-cursed prince fated for death but willing to do anything for his cure, Morgana discovers that her quest for truth may be a more dangerous task than she could have ever expected.