Gothic English Mystery

In 1886, a respectable young woman must acquire a husband. But Violet Pring does not want to marry. She longs to be a professional artist and live on her own terms. When her scheming mother secures a desirable marriage proposal from an eligible Brighton gentleman for her, Violet protests. Her family believes she is deranged and deluded, so she is locked away in Hillwood Grange Lunatic Asylum against her will. In her new cage, Violet faces an even greater challenge: she must escape the clutches of a sinister and formidable doctor and set herself free.

In this award-winning American gothic novel, two estranged friends, Percy and Johnny, reunite at the haunting estate of Rhinebeck, where Johnny’s aunt Alice died while reading an Egyptian book of the dead.

Three haunted young men. A terrible curse. One girl who could break it...if this place doesn't break her first. I learned I couldn't trust anyone - until Cade. My foster brother took me under his wing and sheltered me from the worst of the crap thrown at us. So when he heads off on an exclusive scholarship and everyone around me starts denying he ever existed, Roseborne College has some explaining to do. I'm not leaving until I get answers.

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and intrigue, adopting Gothic devices such as ventriloquism and spontaneous combustion. The satanic interloper Carwin exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, wreaking havoc over the Wieland family with disastrous consequences. A central theme in the novel is the issue of the values that formed the basis of a new democratic and republican America.

They were seven children either orphaned or abandoned by their parents and chosen by legendary philanthropist and brain surgeon Dr. Vincent Capello to live in The Dragon, his almost magical beach house on the Oregon Coast. Allison was the youngest of the lucky ones living an idyllic life with her newfound family...until the night she almost died and was then whisked away from the house and her adopted family forever.

Forever untangling the branches of her strange family tree, Edwina Blackwood is at a turning point. Her parents’ disappearances still strike her as unaccountably odd. Her sister’s questionable life and untimely death have left her shaken. Spellfire has transformed her home and livelihood to ash. And now a devious stalker is on her trail. With supernatural detective Ian Cameron by her side, Edwina can’t get out of London fast enough.

We were always The Four. From our very first day at High Realms. The four scholarship pupils. Outsiders in a world of power and privilege. And, according to everyone else, we were dangerous. It would have made our lives a lot easier if Marta had simply pushed our prefect Genevieve out of our bedroom window that day. Certainly, it would have been tragic. She would have died instantly. But Marta didn’t push her then, or–if you choose to believe me–at any other time. If she had, all of what we went through would not have happened.

I bought a cabin, sight unseen, in the wilderness. It came with quite a few surprises including a handsome stranger next door, Jaxson Monroe. He also happens to be my own personal hero, saving my life. It’s complicated and I don’t want to disappoint him, but he wants to know why I’ve moved here. If I tell him the truth, he will never want to see me again. I’m not the sweet innocent girl he thinks I am. Could I trust a former special forces soldier, or would he betray me? I owed him my life, but did I owe him my heart?

Mayfair Cummings is young, beautiful, and brilliant. But her intelligence makes her the outcast of both the private school she attends and the broken family she hopes to salvage. When she catches the eye of both a popular senior and her handsome English teacher, not even her brilliant mind can help her navigate the explosive new relationships she is forming or a scandal that is brewing....

It is 1917, in that sliver of borderland that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest, handsome, intelligent); Cob (short, heavyset, a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest, thin, ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in Southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula.

In Gold Creek, Michigan, legend has it that the ghost of a local grave digger still walks the cemetery, swinging his shovel, looking for his next victim to bury. But when the town’s wealthy undertaker dies, his estranged daughter must contend with the ghosts that haunt her own family.

In Metsan Valo, her family home on Lake Superior, Anni Halla’s beloved grandmother has died. Among her fond memories, what Anni remembers most vividly is her grandmother’s eerie yet enchanting storytelling. By firelight she spun tall tales of spirits in the nearby forest and waters who could heal - or harm - on a whim. But of course those were only stories.

In 1998, a 16-year-old girl is found dead. She’s posed on a swing on her boarding school’s property, dressed all in white, with no known cause of death. Whispers and rumors swirl, with no answers. But there are a few who know what happened; there is one girl who will never forget. One year earlier: a new student, Violet, steps on the campus of Elm Hollow Academy, an all-girl’s boarding school on the outskirts of a sleepy coastal town. This is her fresh start, her chance to begin again in the wake of tragedy, leave her demons behind.

Nine-year-old Olivia Friel is delighted to be spending the summer at Greyfriars House, a place where her parents, their family and friends are always happy. But this year there's an underlying tension that Olivia doesn't understand. Then one night she sees something she's not meant to, and accidentally lets slip a devastating betrayal. Charlotte Friel gets a call from her ailing mother, asking something she's never asked before: for Charlotte to come home. There are things Olivia needs to tell her daughter before it's too late, secrets to be shared about forgotten relatives and a mysterious house.

Sixteen-year-old Sage is a lonely child. Her adoptive parents watch her obsessively, as if studying her for warning signs of...something. And maybe they're right to - even she can't make sense of the strange things she sees and hears. She possesses knowledge that other teenagers don't, that her parents and teachers - no adult - could possibly have. So when Sage finally makes a friend who understands her alarming gift, he becomes her confidant, a precarious link to the truth about who she really is.

Convention-flouting Nora Harris is a determined young medical student in Gilded Age Manhattan. A surgeon’s daughter, she always leads with her head—until her father’s latest protégé, Euan Colquhoun, steals her heart. Love and logic bind the newly betrothed couple together, but a tragic accident cuts their bright future short. Grief-stricken, Nora finds surprising comfort in corresponding with Euan’s older brother, Malcolm. She decides to forsake her ambitions to retreat to the Colquhoun family farm deep in the tangled woods of upstate New York.

Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr. Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.

Thirty miles off the coast of San Francisco lie the Farallon Islands, known to sailors as the Devil’s Teeth. Despite their fearsome reputation, their remote nature appeals to young Lucy Riley, who in 1859 seeks a new start as a teacher to the lighthouse keepers’ children. But Lucy brings treacherous secrets with her, including a name that isn’t hers and a past she can’t escape. On the island, she meets Will Sisson, a mysterious man who seems to recognize her name—but not her face. Wary of Will at first, Lucy slowly starts to trust him.

After a fire rips through her loft, destroying the seven billboard-size paintings meant for her first major exhibition, a young painter is left with an impossible task: recreate the lost artworks in just three months without getting caught - or ruin her fledgling career. Homeless and desperate, she begs her way into Pine City, an exclusive retreat in upstate New York notorious for three things: outrageous revelries, glamorous artists, and the sparkling black lake where brilliant prodigy Carey Logan drowned herself.

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.