Gothic English Mystery

Since her husband’s unsolved murder three years ago, Iris Blodgett’s life has unraveled. Awash in grief and buried in debt, she can’t pay her mortgage—and now that she’s lost her job, she has no idea how she’ll provide for her unruly teenage daughter, Ellory. Facing eviction, Iris turns to her new beau, prominent architect Hugh Smoll, for a shoulder to cry on. But the seemingly perfect Hugh offers her something more: an invitation to move in to his mother’s centuries-old mansion while he renovates the property.

Ghost underestimated me. Judas likely didn’t think of me at all. Wolf pitied me. To them, I was a peculiar jokester, a shameless flirt, and a restless musician. Brothers and lovers often trivialized the gifts of their counterparts.

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.

The grieving widower. The motherless daughters. A beautiful house in the woods. Deep in a remote Norwegian forest, Lexi has found a new home with architect Tom and his two young daughters. With snow underfoot and the sound of the nearby fjord in her ears, it’s as if Lexi has stepped into a fairy tale. But this family has a history – and this place has a past. Something was destroyed to build their beautiful new house. And those ancient, whispering woods have a long memory. Lexi begins to hear things, see things that don’t make sense.

The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in. For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything—and everyone—at a safe distance. When Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she’s ever had. Soon she’s spending more time at Andrea’s remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn’t even mind that her cousin’s wealthy work friends clearly disapprove of her single lifestyle.

After a harrowing otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive - only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown....

After watching his asthmatic daughter suffer in the foul city air, Theodore Constantine decides to get back to the land. When he and his wife search New England for the perfect nineteenth-century home, they find no township more charming, no countryside more idyllic than the farming village of Cornwall Coombe. Here they begin a new life: simple, pure, close to nature - and ultimately more terrifying than Manhattan’s darkest alley.

When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

Odessa Hardwicke's life is derailed when she's forced to turn her gun on her partner, Walt Leppo, a decorated FBI agent who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defense, shakes the young FBI agent to her core. Devastated, Odessa is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation. But what most troubles Odessa isn't the tragedy itself - it's the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent's body after his death.

Jutting from sparkling turquoise waters off the Italian coast, Isle Isola is an idyllic setting for a wedding. In the majestic cliff-top villa owned by the wealthy Compton family, up-and-coming artist Claire Hunter will marry handsome, charming Jack Compton, surrounded by close family, intimate friends…and a host of dark secrets.

Pru Dunning has everything she ever wanted: a successful boyfriend, a thriving nursing career, and a truly comfortable life. But then the strange voicemails start. Scarletta, the woman calls herself. She seems to know Pru, although Pru certainly doesn't know that name, nor does she recognize the glamorous voice leaving her poisonous messages. Pru begins to carefully investigate. But when she suddenly becomes a person of interest in a murder case, it feels like Scarletta’s toxic voice, lashing out from the shadows, will silence all beauty in Pru’s perfect life, once and for all.

After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she’s the heroine of a gothic novel—the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls? But before Blake can discern the novel’s ending, she’s found dead, murdered in a claw-foot tub. The proprietress of White Hall stands accused.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds...and remembers.

November 1816. Restless but naive Emeline Fitzpatrick is desperate to escape her stifling life in foggy Halifax. Her guardian is lining up repugnant suitors, but Emeline has her eyes set on a handsome lieutenant in the British navy. She just needs to persuade him to propose, or her one chance at happiness will be gone forever. But when Emeline’s hopes end in scandal, she finds herself with only one suitor left: the wealthy and enigmatic Captain Graves. Having already lost two wives to tragic circumstances, the unfortunate widower is seeking a new companion in his cloistered seaside manor.

The charm of spending the Christmas holidays in South Wales, with its crumbling castles and ancient myths, seems the perfect distraction from the nightmares that have plagued literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw since the loss of her baby five years ago. Instead she meets an emotionally fragile young widow who's convinced that Lyn's recurring dreams have drawn her to Castle Farm for an important purpose - and she's running out of time.

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.

Ricky Desmond has been through this all before. If he could just get through to his mother, he could convince her that he doesn't belong at Brookline. From the man who thinks he can fly to the woman who killed her husband, the other patients are nothing like him; all he did was lose his temper just a little bit, just the once. But when Ricky is selected by the sinister Warden Crawford for a very special program - a program that the warden claims will not cure him but perfect him - Ricky realizes that he may not be able to wait for his mom a second longer.

William Day should be an acclaimed Arctic explorer. But after a failed expedition, in which his remaining men only survived by eating their dead comrades, he returned in disgrace. Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same frozen waters. Perhaps this is Day’s chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens­—the man who’s haunted his whole life—back home. But when the rescue mission becomes an uncanny journey into his past, Day must face up to the things he’s­ done.

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.