Gothic English Mystery

House flippers Jack and Juniper are planning to ring in the New Year slinging tapas, vino, and beer in an old Victorian mansion that they've transformed into Bohemian Lake's first inn and taproom, but the mansion's poltergeist is out to dash their merriment with mean-spirited sabotage. Having laid otherworldly rumors to rest before, Juniper is skeptical, but the alarms aren't going off. When the mischief turns deadly, Juniper calls in a part-time paranormal investigator but the man's discoveries leave her thinking that her problem is more personal than paranormal.

Florida Gothic Stories contains 11 of Vicki Hendricks’ best, some previously published and some new to this volume. Hendricks’ stories are riveting and unsettling - some offer surreal sojourns into the dark side of magical realism while others are pure Florida noir, with a full menu of characters twisted and damaged, yet with a gritty determination to survive.

Mr. Stamford meets Sherlock Holmes while studying at St. Bartholomew's Medical College in London. With his intense stare and unorthodox methods of doing things, Holmes has already gained a reputation as an eccentric but brilliant man. When suspected intruders are sighted at the British Museum, Holmes is called upon to give his opinion of what happened. But before he can come to any conclusions, something horrifying happens—one of the great treasures of the world, the priceless Rosetta Stone, is stolen from the museum.

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.

Jono, a city-born Indigenous teenager, is trying to figure out who he really is. Life in Brisbane hasn’t exactly made him feel connected to his Country or community. Luckily, he’s got his best friend, Jenny, who has been by his side through their hectic days at St Lucia Private. After graduating, Jono and Jenny score gigs at the Aboriginal Performing Arts Centre and an incredible opportunity comes knocking – interning with a documentary crew. Their mission? To promote a big government mining project in the wild western Queensland desert.

Bridget Baxter is the very last orphan at the Orphanage for Errant Childs, left at the mercy of the awful Miss Acrid and her foul-smelling fish sandwiches. Miss Acrid's mission is to make Bridget's life a misery. But Bridget is more than a match for her. When kindly Mr Vanderpuff arrives at the Orphanage in search of a child to care for, Bridget thinks her luck has finally turned. Mr Vanderpuff is the village baker, and his shop is a world of wonders. But they soon discover that Bridget is absolutely terrible at baking.

Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father Armando is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried.

Tied to a derelict pier on Orkney, the bloated remains of a man bob in the waves, under the shadow of forbidding Sandisquoy House. The locals know him as William Spencer. But DCI Lukas Mahler identifies him as Alex Fleming - his former boss. Unable to step away from the case, Mahler tries to piece together why Fleming would retire to such a remote location. But the deeper he digs, the more disturbing the investigation becomes.

There is much that heavily pregnant Grace still doesn't know about her new husband King's background. So, when word comes that King's father is dying, Grace is eager to accompany him to his childhood home, Blackwater, located in a remote part of Tasmania. Things go badly from the start. The house is in terrible repair, King's dying father yells at Grace to leave and King's twin sister, Ruth, seems disturbed by Grace's presence. After his father's death, King convinces Grace they must stay and help Ruth settle the estate, but as time stretches on he grows strange and distant.

Roger “Bud” Macleod and his two brothers return to the ramshackle home of their youth on emergency leave from the military after the murder of their reviled father. Instead of having the festive reunion they’d planned with Mama and their sister, the three soldiers are flung into a series of violent confrontations with old and new rivals plus double trouble: Papa’s siblings.

When she was just fourteen, Jill’s family moved to Walney Island. Initially intoxicated by the freedom of the seaside setting—and fifteen-year-old Andrew Brownstone—she came to learn that her first impressions were very wrong. After making a shocking discovery in Seaview House, Jill fled the scene—a guilty secret she’s carried with her ever since. Now, thirty years later, when the decrepit Seaview House is being demolished, a body is found buried in the garden. But who is the deceased?

Joanna Flynn was lucky to be alive. But when the doctors told her she would suffer no lasting effects from the near-fatal accident, they were wrong. For that night the nightmares about Caroline began. As the dreams become more torturous, Joanna sets out to investigate this mysterious woman - a journey that takes her 3,000 miles from home to a picturesque town where everybody seems to have a conflicting opinion of the woman who haunts her dreams.

In the 1940s, Coden, Alabama, was a hideaway for movie stars - an isolated playground tucked among live oaks and placid bay waters where pleasure and vice could be indulged. By the summer of 1974 Coden’s glamour has faded, but it doesn’t bother Mimi Bosarge, who is just happy to have a job as a live-in tutor with the wealthiest family in town, the Hendersons. When the Hendersons generously open their arms to Annie, a troubled teenager with no recollection of her past, Mimi’s greatest concern is creating a curriculum for the family’s new ward.

Alexandra Belarus is a struggling artist living in New York City, even though her family is rich in real estate, including a towering Gothic Gramercy Park building built by her great-great-grandfather. But the truth of her bloodline is revealed when she is attacked on the street and saved by an inhumanly powerful winged figure. A figure who knows the Belarus name....

Orphaned at the age of six, Jane Williams has grown up in a series of foster homes, learning to survive in the shadows of life. Through hard work and determination, she manages to win a scholarship to the exclusive Birch Grove Academy. There, for the first time, Jane finds herself accepted by a group of friends. She even starts tutoring the headmistress's gorgeous son, Lucien. Things seem too good to be true. They are.

Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus' troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.

From the depths of a valley rises the city of Mahala. It's a city built upwards, not across - where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit, and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under. Rojan Dizon doesn't mind staying in the shadows, because he's got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But he can't hide forever. Because when Rojan stumbles upon the secrets lurking in the depths of the Pit, the fate of Mahala will depend on him using his magic.

A young graduate student travels to Walden Pond expecting to find inspiration in the quiet solitude but instead finds something eerie and malevolent living deliberately in Thoreau's woods. When graduate student Aine Cahill uncovers a journal proving that her aunt Bonnie was an intimate companion of Henry David Thoreau during his supposedly solitary sojourn at Walden Pond, she knows that she has found the perfect subject for her dissertation. She decides to travel to Walden Pond herself to hunker down and work on her writing, but it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems....

From the internationally best-selling author, a lush and imaginative novel that crisscrosses time as passion and obsessions collide. An orphan named René le Florentin is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. Traveling with the young duchessina from Italy to France, René brings with him a cache of secret documents from the monastery where he was trained: recipes for exotic fragrances and potent medicines - and a formula for an alchemic process said to have the potential to reanimate the dead.

Turn to me, Natalie. His mental call to her was dangerous, of course. Dangerous for him. Dangerous for her too, but she was in danger, anyway. Look at me now. Her gaze traveled slowly upward. With every moment, physical awareness stretched tauter between them. Her eyes wandered over Julian's face, over his slashing dark brows, down the ridge of his aquiline nose to his chiseled mouth.