Gothic Historical Fiction

On a hot June day in 1965, two six-year-old boys, Gareth and Jack, compete to see who can climb higher up a tree. When Jack falls and loses his eye on a thorn bush, the accident sets off a series of events that will bind the boys together for the rest of their lives. When the best friends meet albino twins Clara and Blanca, a shared fate unfolds. With Gareth and Jack's help, the twins are able to reclaim their lives and leave their nightmarish past behind them.

Traveling to be with her fiance's terminally ill mother in her last days, Saoirse Read expected her introduction to the family's ancestral home would be bittersweet. But the stark thrust of Langdon Hall against the cliff and the hundred darkened windows in its battered walls are almost as forbidding as the woman who lies wasting inside. Her fiance's parents make no secret of their distaste for Saoirse, and their feelings have long since spread to their son. Or perhaps it is only the shadows of her mind suggesting she's unwelcome, seizing on her fears while her beloved grieves?

El abogado inglés Jonathan Harker se despide de su prometida Mina para realizar un viaje de negocios a Transilvania, donde vive el Conde Drácula. Nunca imaginó que quedaría atrapado en el remoto Castillo a merced de extrañas criaturas que lo llevarán a la locura. Mientras que Mina espera su regreso en casa de su bella amiga Lucy, llega un barco a Londres procedente del Bósforo con un extraño pasajero, El Conde Drácula. De pronto la pobre Lucy comienza a sufrir una extraña enfermedad, en su cuello han aparecido dos extraños orificios que intrigan al doctor Seward, quien pide consejo al afamado doctor Abraham Van Helsing.

Leedswick Castle has housed the Alnwick family in the English countryside for generations, despite a family curse determined to destroy their legacy and erase them from history. Three beloved authors share stories of the Alnwick family through the generations, revealing how love and war can change a place—but only its people can unshackle it from the misdeeds of the past.

With a modest inheritance and the three gowns that comprise her entire wardrobe, Theodora leaves Edinburgh—and a disappointed suitor—far behind. She is bound for Romania, where tales of vampires are still whispered, to visit an old friend and write the book that will bring her true independence. She arrives at a magnificent, decaying castle in the Carpathians, replete with eccentric inhabitants, including the castle’s master, Count Andrei Dragulescu.

In the spring of 1844, the Wells family receives a letter from a distant relative, the wealthy landowner Nicholas Van Ryn. He has invited one of their daughters for an extended visit at his Hudson Valley estate, Dragonwyck. Eighteen-year-old Miranda, bored with her local suitors and commonplace life on the farm, leaps at the chance for escape.

Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again. Autumn 1930. Journalist Nell Fagan knows there's only one person who can get to the bottom of this mystery: Rachael Savernake. But someone wants Nell dead, and soon, while investigating a series of recent deaths at Blackstone Sanatorium, she's missing entirely. Looking for answers, Rachel travels to lonely Blackstone Fell, with its eerie moor, deadly waters and sinister tower.

It's 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island's women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island's dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of. As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen

Commander Torin Gray is known among the Bruce's most elite Highland warriors as Shadow because of his prowess at infiltrating any English stronghold and discovering its weaknesses before bringing the king's army to its doors. After watching the English massacre his family when he was a boy, he vowed revenge on them all, one stronghold at a time. For him, the Scottish War of Independence is personal and he will not be stopped. But nothing could have prepared him for the beautiful outlaw he's about to face, or how bravely she draws him out of the shadows and into the light.

This annotated edition of the classic Gothic novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly includes an historical introduction, an overview, study of the themes present in the book, and a list of famous quotes.

Yorkshire, 1843. When disgraced former schoolmaster John Eyre arrives at Thornfield Hall to take up a position as tutor to two peculiar young boys, he enters a world unlike any he's ever known. Darkness abounds, punctuated by odd bumps in the night, strange creatures on the moor, and a sinister silver mist that never seems to dissipate. And at the center of it all, John's new employer - a widow as alluring as she is mysterious.

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.

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.

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.

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

When Elizabeth Bennet and Catherine Morland travel into Kent to visit the recently married Collinses in the village of Hunsford, Lizzy is annoyed to discover Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam at Rosings, while Cathy is certain that novel-worthy romance will ensue. Neither expect the sudden arrival of a vampire into their midst, and Mr. Darcy’s ardent admiration of Elizabeth Bennet is shaken by her expert handling of his frantic, fanged sister.

Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn't grown a single inch since she was five. Then at the age of 15 the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as 'Captain'. Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather. Resenting his grandson for his mother's death in childbirth, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name when he remarries, and a new heir is produced. Unable to train to be a doctor as he'd hoped, Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell's Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical 'family'.

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?

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.

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the 20th century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man - a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil.