Gothic English Mystery

When Guinevere ""Nev"" Tallow receives an acceptance letter to the exclusive Deephaven Academy, they know it’s the fresh start that they’ve been looking for. But things are strange from the moment they arrive—the house itself seems to breathe, students whisper secrets in dark corridors, and the entire east wing of the academy is locked away for reasons no one wants to explain. And Nev knows something ragged stalks the shadowy corridors, something that sobs quietly and scratches at the walls, waiting to be released.

When Lois Grover moves into the Beacon of Hope Assisted Living Center, she fears boredom will consume her, but a fellow resident soon invites her to a secret meeting of the Twilight Society. This quirky group of elderly residents, with a variety of skills, talents, and expertise, helps lost souls, tethered to the world of the living, by solving the mysteries keeping them from moving on. The center itself—a historic colonial mansion that has functioned as a hospital, a school, and a sanitarium—possesses mysteries of its own that both help and hinder the society's investigations.

Rosemary Chivers is haunted by the choices she made as a teenager—and by those made for her by a controlling mother. Now, in the Cold War era of conformity and suspicion, Rosemary is a modern new teacher at a school for troubled girls, where she challenges the narrow curriculum meant to tame restless young minds. She also keeps a devastating secret. She knows one of the students is the child she gave up. But which one?

When Eliza Sullivan inherits an estate from a recently deceased aunt, she leaves behind a grievous and guilt-ridden past in New Orleans for rural England and a fresh start. Eliza arrives at her new home and finds herself falling for the mysterious lord of Havenwood, Malcolm Winfield. Despite the sinister rumors that surround him, Eliza is drawn to his melancholy charm and his crumbling, once-beautiful mansion. With enough love, she thinks, both man and manor could be repaired.

On a blistering summer day in 1968, nine-year-old Tommy vanishes without a trace from Coram House, an orphanage on the shores of Lake Champlain. Some say a nun drowned him, others say he ran away. Or maybe he never existed. Fifty years later, his disappearance is still unsolved. Struggling true crime writer Alex Kelley needs a fresh start. When she’s asked to ghostwrite a book about the orphanage—and the abuses that occurred there—she packs up her belongings and moves to wintry Burlington, Vermont.

A neuroscientist walks out of her life and isolates herself in the woods, intending to blow the whistle on a pharmaceutical company and its creativity drug gone wrong. A recently orphaned graduate school dropout is hired as a "literary detective" to decode the work of a mysterious Internet poet who writes about disappearances and murders with an inexplicably precise knowledge of private details. And a virologist discovers her identity has been stolen by a conceptual artist in whose stories someone always goes missing.

Recovering from a terrible auto accident just before the turn of the millennium, college dropout and hobbyist computer-game programmer Lucien Swenson becomes the caretaker of a house in Northern Minnesota. Shortly after moving in, Lucien sets out to find a woman with whom he had an affair, who vanished along with money stolen from the bank where they had worked together. His search will take him to Rose of Sharon, a white supremacist church deep in the wilderness, where a cabal of outcasts await the end of the world at a place they call The Land.

Journalist Charlie Cates has always believed in facts, in what can be proved - her career depends on it. Which is why she has never truly accepted the supernatural visions that guide her to children in danger. After her work on a high-profile missing-child case brings unwanted fame, she reluctantly flees to the lush Big Island of Hawaii with her best friend, Rae. Determined to avoid her disturbing visions, Charlie begins writing what seems to be a harmless interview of a prominent volcanologist. But soon, she's haunted by dreams of a local girl who went missing six weeks earlier.

Aspiring author Graye Templeton will do anything to escape the horrific childhood crime that haunts her. After a life lived in shadows, she’s accepted a new job as protégé to Laura West, influential book blogger and wife of an acclaimed novelist. Laura’s connections could make Graye’s publishing dreams a reality. But there’s more to Laura than meets the eye. Behind the veneer of a charmed life, Laura’s marriage is collapsing. Her once-lauded husband is descending into alcoholism and ruin and bringing Laura nearer to the edge.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

Nine-year-old Samuel lives alone in a once-great estate in Surrey with the family’s housekeeper, Ruth. His father is dead, and his mother has been abroad for months, purportedly tending to her late husband’s faltering business. She left one night while Samuel was sleeping. Beyond her sporadic postcards, Samuel hears nothing from his mother. Samuel’s life is otherwise regulated by Ruth, who runs the house with an iron fist. As rumors in town begin to swirl, Samuel wonders whether something more sinister is afoot. Perhaps his mother did not leave but was murdered - by Ruth.

At 10 years old, Hadley Dixon's life changed forever. Since those few tragic weeks, she's tried to keep the past buried, but old bones have a way of rising up. Grown now, Hadley can't hide any longer. Haunted by a boy who never made it home, a woman who sings in moonlight and dances in flames, and the strange, scarred recluse who watches it all from the shadow of the pines, the time has come for Hadley to pay for her sins.

When her beloved sister Caroline dies suddenly, Deirdre is heartbroken. However, her sorrow turns to bone-chilling confusion when she receives a message Caroline sent days earlier warning that her death would be no accident. Long used to being a pariah to her family, Deirdre covers her tattoos and heads to Manhattan for her sister’s funeral. The message claimed Caroline’s husband, Theo, killed his first wife and got away with it.

There’s something in the lake at Wren Hall. At least, that’s what the locals say. Not that Meg cares much about the rumors. When she’s asked to spend Halloween weekend at the Ireland retreat of the wealthy Wren twins, she recognizes the invitation for exactly what it is: her last, and only, chance to save her spot at Greyscott’s, the exclusive British art school she attended on scholarship until last summer. Clever, beautiful, and talented, the twins are the pride of Greyscott’s, and kindhearted Lottie Wren was once Meg’s closest friend. But not anymore.

One hot summer's day, John Cole decides to shut his bookshop early, and possibly forever, and drives out of London to see his brother. When his car breaks down on an isolated road, he goes looking for help and finds a dilapidated house. As he approaches, a laughing woman he's never seen before walks out, addresses him by name and explains she's been waiting for him. Entering the home, John discovers an enigmatic clan of residents all of whom seem to know who he is, and also claim they have been awaiting him arrival.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe is a quintessential Gothic novel that combines romance, mystery, and horror, set against the backdrop of the picturesque but menacing landscapes of the Apennines. The story follows the fortunes of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers misadventures that include the death of her father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle, and machinations of an Italian brigand. This novel is celebrated for its elaborate descriptions of nature, its exploration of the sublime and the terrifying, and its influence on later Gothic literature.

Beneath Lausanne Cathedral, in Switzerland, there is a secret buried before time began.... Marc Rochat watches over the city at night from the belfry of the cathedral. He lives in a world of shadows and "beforetimes" and imaginary beings. Katherine Taylor, call girl and daydreamer, is about to discover that her real-life fairy tale is too good to be true. Jay Harper, private detective, wakes up in a crummy hotel room with no memory. Three lives, one purpose: save what's left of paradise before all hell breaks loose.

It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged 17, has been sent down - "rusticated" - from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder.

England 1904. Mirror twins Adelaide and Victoria have spent their lives in orbit of each other– doomed to be in the other’s shadow, their lives are intertwined and inextricable as each other’s identical inverse. Adelaide is dutiful and reserved, happy to remain in her childhood home, Harewood Hall, forever. Victoria wishes for a thrilling life, exploring the world and finding a great romance–but the twins cannot live apart. Visiting Lord Stanley bewitches Victoria with his talk of a life of luxury in New York, but it is obedient Adelaide whom he marries against her will and to Victoria’s fury

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.