English Gothic

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.

I’m the son of Liam O’Reagan, next in line to wear the crown. And when I prove myself worthy, I will RULE over the Irish Mafia. I don’t have time for distractions - much less time for a woman who has always been the bane of my existence. When Maeve comes back into my life, I fight like hell to resist the pull she has on me. An attraction that has only grown stronger with time.

Cat lives in Los Angeles, far from 36 Westeryk Road, the imposing gothic house in Edinburgh where she and her estranged twin sister, El, grew up. As kids, they invented Mirrorland, a dark, imaginary place under the pantry stairs, full of pirates, witches, and clowns. These days, Cat rarely thinks about their childhood home, or the fact that El now lives there with her husband, Ross. But when El mysteriously disappears after going out on her sailboat, Cat is forced to return to 36 Westeryk Road, which hasn’t changed in twenty years.

On the day of his wedding, Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed under mysterious circumstances. His calculating father, Manfred, fears that his dynasty will now come to an end and determines to marry his son's bride himself, despite the fact he is already married. But a series of terrifying supernatural omens soon threaten this unlawful union, as the curse placed on Manfred's ancestor, who usurped the lawful Prince of Otranto, begins to unfold.

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline. Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got. They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted. They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic.

Welcome to Carnage Island. Home of brutal chaos. Blood and tears. And nefarious schemes. A half-breed. A reject. A wolf without a mate. My family doesn't want me. My alpha disowned me. And my mate rejected me. So I’ve just been given a new pack assignment. Carnage Island. Home to the worst of wolf kind. Vicious. Cruel beasts. Wicked deeds. I’m not one of them. But I’m not a Nantahala wolf either. I’m something distinctly other: an Omega trapped in an Alpha’s skin. One step toward my fate, and all the males turn their heads. I’m fresh meat. Property to be claimed.

When Alice's husband disappears while investigating a series of strange and terrible incidents in the bustling seaport of Salem, she is forced to bring her young daughter, Abigail, along from Boston while she takes up the search. But she soon learns of a terrible curse that has the entire town bracing for nightfall: One hundred years after the infamous witch trials, the vengeful spirit of a woman hanged for witchcraft will rise from hell to claim the souls of Salem's children.

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the 20th century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man - a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil.

Once upon a time, humankind ruled the world while lycans and vampires lived in secret. This is no longer that time. Welcome to the Clemente Clan. Be careful. We bite.

I have 36 hours to live. Thirty-six hours to find a solution. Thirty-six hours to kill them all. My friends. My family. My subjects. It's a cruel fate, one my maker subjected me to over a century ago when she placed me in this hell. I learned then that freedom is a falsehood. Escape doesn't exist. I'm a ticking time bomb, slated to erupt.

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite…an appetite they say tortures him still.

Known for his looks and charm, a young man obsessed with wealth and status will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He sets his sights on a beautiful and innocent college student named Dorothy, intent on marrying her for her family’s money. But when Dorothy becomes pregnant, his careful plans start to unravel, and he begins to take cold, calculating, and drastic measures to protect his future.

Kicked out of her house because her father can no longer tolerate her constant delinquency, Roxy wanders the streets of New York, living in a fleabag hotel. Spotted by an "agent" for Madam Brittany, a sophisticated woman who runs an escort service, Roxy is taken into the Madam's "training program" where she is educated and set up with her own boutique apartment.

Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny, were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.

Based on true crimes, The Specimen is a mesmerizing story about one woman’s search for truth and vengeance in the darkest of places—where the deadliest secrets lie hidden in plain sight on a freshly dusted shelf.

From book one: Being able to rip the soul out of a creature, store it in a precious gem, and use it to cast spells might make me the most powerful student at the Astra Argent Magical Academy. Only I can’t tell anybody about it. Because it's illegal, and they’ll kill me if they find out. But they need me whether they know it yet or not, so I’m going to capture a lot of souls and cast a lot of spells. This is gonna be a crazy semester. This is a monster-girl harem dark-magic academy story.

Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented bones, reminders of what they have all lost to a war that never seems to end.

A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake. She introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.

Clara and her brother, Teddy, grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later, they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when intimate videos of Clara are leaked online.

V.C. Andrews' thrilling new novel spins a tale of dreadful secrets and dark, forbidden passions—of the time before Flowers in the Attic began. Long before terror flowered in the attic, thin, spinsterish Olivia came to Virginia as Malcolm Foxworth's bride. At last, with her tall handsome husband, she would find the joy she had waited for, longed for. But in the gloomy mansion filled with hidden rooms and festering desires, a stain of jealous obsession begins to spread...an evil that will threaten her children, two lovely boys and one very special, beautiful girl.