Gothic English Mystery

As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her "charge", John Cosway, a 39-year-old man whose strange behavior is vaguely explained by his mother and sisters as part of the madness that runs in the family.

Four students travel to Ravencliffe, an eerie abandoned hotel perched on steep cliffs on the Welsh coast. After a series of unexplained accidents, only three of them leave. The fourth, Leo, disappears, and is never seen again. A decade on, the friends have lost contact. Oscar is fame-hungry, making public appearances and selling his story. Richard sank into alcoholism and is only just recovering. Bex just wants to forget – until one last opportunity to go back offers the chance to find out what really happened to Leo.

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.

Lisa needs to disappear. And her friend's rambling old home in the wilds of Yorkshire seems like the perfect place. It's miles away from the closest town, and no one there knows her or her little boy, Joe. But when Lisa meets some of the locals and hears some disturbing rumours about the house, she realises it might not be the sanctuary she thought. What secret has Rowan Isle House - and her friend - kept hidden all these years? And what will Lisa have to do to survive when her own past finally catches up with her?

A mysterious woman pleads for the help of Inspectors Frey and 'Nine-Nails' McGray. Her son, illegitimate scion of the Koloman family, has received an anonymous death threat - right after learning he is to inherit the best part of a vast wine-producing estate. In exchange for their protection, she offers McGray the ultimate cure for his sister, who has been locked in an insane asylum after brutally murdering their parents: the miraculous waters that spring in a small island in the remote Loch Maree.

Still in shock after the tragic death of husband Richie, Cassie Macreddin hopes that her new home, historic Hindon House, is the place where she can heal her pain and hide her secrets. But Hindon House has secrets of its own. Cassie soon realises that not everyone is pleased at her arrival and that someone is actively trying to make her leave Hindon House…but who? And why? As events escalate, Cassie must fight to save her home…and maybe even her life.

1968, Sicily. Just months after an earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. 2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter asks her friend for help to prove her father’s innocence.

Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl” at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha’s panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha’s best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped.

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.

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.

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.

John Brandon has quickly become a critical darling thanks to his evocative prose and recognizable, yet quirky, characters. Citrus County introduces teenaged Shelby Register and her offbeat family. Moving to the swampy Citrus County region of Florida, Shelby is quickly confronted by life’s challenges and possibilities.

“Get it out of me.” It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in the lavish Savannah townhouse of his girlfriend, Maura. Police ruled his death a suicide sparked by psychosis, but Holly can’t shake the idea that something else must have happened—something involving another message he sent earlier that night about a “game” Maura wanted to play.

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.

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.