Gothic Historical Fiction

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.

Successful young mystery novelist Molly Hunt, raised by adoptive parents on Long Island, is stunned when a chance encounter leads to a startling revelation. She is apparently the daughter of the aristocratic Mountfort family of Charleston, South Carolina, kidnapped as an infant from their ancestral home - and has an identical twin sister.

1589. Scottish housemaid Geillis and Danish courtier Margareta lead opposite lives, but they both know one thing: when a man cries “witch”, no woman is safe. Yet when the marriage of King James VI and Princess Anna of Denmark brings Geillis and Margareta together, everything they supposed about good, evil, men, and women, is cast in a strange and brilliant new light. For the first time in history, could black magic – or rumours of it – be a very real tool for women’s political gain?

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.

"Dog days and the fresh bodies are arriving once again." So begins the fall term at South Carolina Medical College, where Dr. Jacob Thacker is on probation for Xanax abuse. His interim career - working public relations for the dean - takes an unnerving detour into the past when the bones of African American slaves, over a century old, are unearthed on the campus. Out of the college’s dark past, these bones threaten to rise and condemn the present.

Molly Wasziak’s life has not gone the way she dreamed. Facing depression after several miscarriages, Molly is adapting to her husband’s purchase of a peculiar old farm. A search for a family tree pulls Molly deep into a centuryold murder case and a web of deception, all made more mysterious by the disturbing shadows and sounds inside the farmhouse.

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.

1786, Jerusalem College, Cambridge. The ghost of Sylvia Whichcote is rumoured to be haunting Jerusalem, since disturbed fellow-commoner, Frank Oldershaw, claims to have seen the dead woman prowling the grounds. Desperate to salvage her son’s reputation, Lady Anne Oldershaw employs John Holdsworth, author of The Anatomy of Ghosts a stinging account of why ghosts are mere delusion to investigate.

Romantics everywhere have been enthralled by Emily Bronte's classic novel of the tragic love between beautiful, spirited Catherine Earnshaw and dark, brooding Heathcliff. The restrained desire between these two star-crossed lovers has always smoldered on the page. And now it ignites into an uncontrollable blaze. In Wuthering Nights, writer I.J. Miller reimagines this timeless story to reveal the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff - in all its forbidden glory.

The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel. The son of Manfred, Prince of Otranto, is mysteriously killed on his wedding day by a huge helmet. The event leads to a fast-paced story of jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena unfolding in an atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight, and dark castle walls mirroring the inner turmoil of the characters themselves.

London, 1765. Lady Isabella Gerard, a respectable member of Georgian society, orders her maid to take her new golden gown and destroy it, its shimmering beauty tainted by the actions of her brutal husband the night before. Three months later, Lord Gerard stands at the shoreline of the lake, looking down at a woman wearing the golden gown. As the body slowly rolls over to reveal her face, it’s clear this was not his intended victim…

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.

Goldengrove’s towers and twisted chimneys rose at the very edge of the peaceful Weald, a stone’s throw from the poisonous marshes and merciless waters of Rye Bay. Young Tabby Palethorp had been running wild there, ever since her mother grew too ill to leave her room. I was the perfect choice to give Tabby a good English education: thoroughly respectable and far too plain to tempt her lonely father, Sir Kit, to indiscretion. I knew better than to trust my new employer with the truth about my past. But knowing better couldn’t stop me from yearning for impossible things.

England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly remarried to a war-traumatised husband and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction. She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to re-create the evening.

Innkeeper’s daughter Jane Heatherington is sold into indentured servitude to cover her father’s debts. She's sold to Aidan Warrick, a man whose handsome face and form mock the rumors that skulk in his shadow, rumors that paint him a smuggler, a pirate...and worse. Isolated and alone, Jane's only companion is the man she dare not trust, the man who looks at her with heated desire she both fears and craves. Jane must decide if Aidan Warrick is the dark prince of her dreams or a monster preying on the innocent....

Edinburgh, 1826. Isobel Tait does her best to raise her young son Thomas alone, but yellow fever has left him with a scarred heart. Even a specialist, the renowned Dr. Connall Burnett, can do nothing for him. Isobel decides to make the most the remaining time with her son. Until he goes missing. A chance visit to Dr. Burnett's collection of specimens elicits a horrifying realization: there, in a small jar among stuffed lizards and misshapen bones, is a new addition. A tiny human heart.

A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture - now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving. After 20 years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar.

After nearly two years and with one token left to hide, a powerful magical event hits Talohna and causes the failure of the most important spell Kael has ever cast. The horrific results leave him a wanted man and all of his efforts to form an alliance against the Ri’Tek fall apart. With the tokens hidden at last, Kael wants nothing more than to forget the past and to spend time with his family, but knowing they will never be safe no matter where they hide, he recruits Treach in a bid to scour the Arcane Library catacombs for an answer.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in 1847 in Dublin as the third of seven children. Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. He even grew up to become a successful athlete. Stoker is best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. The novel Dracula begins when an English lawyer, Jonathan Harker, travels to Eastern Europe to meet Count Dracula, who is a client of his. When he arrives in Transylvania, he immediately notices that locals are shocked to learn where he is heading.

Swedish Lapland, 1717. Maija, her husband Paavo and her daughters Frederika and Dorotea arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms BlackAsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow.