Historical Horror Fiction

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

More than 500 years before his friendship with Kitty, noble Ricardo de Avila's life met a fate-changing twist, and his morally complex, blood-soaked existence as an immortal began. Before being turned, Ricardo de Avila would have followed Coronado to the ends of the earth. Instead he found the end of his mortal life - and a new one, as a renegade vampire. For over 500 years as an immortal, Ricardo has followed his own moral code, upsetting the established order in the demon world.

Gemma Turner once dreamed of stardom. Now the actress is on the cusp of obscurity. When she’s offered the lead in a radical new horror film, Gemma believes her luck has changed—but her dream is about to turn into a nightmare. One night, between the shadows of an alleyway, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. Yet, Gemma is alive. She’s been pulled into the film. And the script—and the monsters within it—are coming to life. Gemma must play her role perfectly if she hopes to survive.

Orphans Clara and Jacob Marley live by their wits, scavenging for scraps in the poorest alleyways of London, in the shadow of the workhouse. Every night, Jake promises his little sister ‘tomorrow will be better’, and when the chance to escape poverty comes their way, he seizes it despite the terrible price. And so Jacob Marley is set on a path that leads to his infamous partnership with Ebenezer Scrooge. As Jacob builds a fortress of wealth to keep the world out, only Clara can warn him of the hideous fate that awaits him if he refuses to let love and kindness into his heart....

Birmingham, Alabama, is infested with malevolence. Prejudice and hatred have consumed the minds and hearts of its populace. A murderer, unimaginatively named "Harry the Hacker" by the press, has been carving up citizens with a hatchet. And from the church known as Chapelwood, an unholy gospel is being spread by a sect that worships dark gods from beyond the heavens.

Come into the East End of London, England, 1888. Walk the streets of Whitechapel and slums of Spitalfields, side by side with history's most notorious serial killer. Overhear his plans, and listen - or try not to - to his secret thoughts as he waits in the shadows. Keep pace, if you have the nerve, as he stalks his victims. Watch, if you have the stomach, as he commits his outrages. And run with him, if you're still upright, as he escapes the swarming forces of police desperate for his hide and head.

Rick Yancey won the Michael L. Printz Award for the stunning first entry in his Monstrumologist saga. In the series’ third entry, Will Henry is left behind as Dr. Warthrop and his eager new assistant Arkwright embark on a quest to find the “Holy Grail of Monstrumology.” But when Arkwright returns with news of the doctor’s demise, Will sets off on his own quest, to the Isle of Blood, to determine the truth.

Adventuress Countess Alessandra Zorzi has a new vocation: reacquiring the occult artifacts she stole to put into the safer hands of Miskatonic University. With her new apprentice, Pepper Kelly, Zorzi tracks the infamous Zanthu Tablets to Paris. But the city is rife with spies and the countess has many enemies. When Pepper is kidnapped, it becomes clear that someone is out for revenge.

1905. A year after 'the affair' in Dinas Powys, Thomas Bexley has become a drunkard and recluse, haunted by terrible visions of the dead. But when news of a spate of extraordinary kidnappings reaches him, Thomas is shocked to learn that his dear friend and former mentor, Professor Elijah Hawthorn, is the lead suspect. Discovering a plea for help from Hawthorn claiming to have unearthed a gruesome conspiracy at the heart of the Metropolitan Police, Thomas embarks on a journey to prove Hawthorn's innocence.

When David stumbles upon a tragic young woman in a sordid Limehouse pub, he has no idea she’d recognize him as the last vampyre alive, nor that she’d be the one to pull out his story. Yet as he recalls his life from the sweltering vineyards of ancient Rome to the cold horrors of medieval Romania—as well as his tumultuous past with the mad and mysterious Lucius—he realizes she is much more than what she seems. Gothic horror and mythological fantasy blend seamlessly together in this thrilling adventure, breathing new life into vampire lore as it reveals its true origins.

Carrie Jo has a secret - she dreams about the past. The handsome and wealthy Ashland Stuart has hired her to uncover the history and the secrets of Seven Sisters, an aging antebellum mansion in sultry downtown Mobile, Alabama. A series of dreams, an untimely death, and the betrayal of someone she loves lead her back in time to uncover the truth about a missing young heiress and a web of secrets.

Legendary thriller writer David Morrell transports listeners to the fogbound streets of London, where a killer plots to assassinate Queen Victoria. The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, and their Scotland Yard companions, finds himself confronted by an adversary who threatens the heart of the nation.

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.

Dr. John Gladstone, a scientist in Victorian London, is thrust into the world of the vampire after his carriage runs over a young man of angelic beauty named Niccolo. When Niccolo kidnaps Gladstone's child and vanishes, the doctor must go in pursuit, with the help of his daughter, Ursula, who is enticed by the lure of eternal life, and Lady Hespeth, whose demure exterior hides a dangerous obsession. Why are the vampires taking children, and what is the connection to Gladstone's experiments with a deadly virus?

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumors of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca—and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling.

When fourteen-year-old Irene Sauvelle moves with her family to Cape House on the coast of Normandy, she's immediately taken by the beauty of the place - its expansive cliffs, coasts, and harbors. There, she meets a local boy named Ishmael, and the two soon fall in love. But a dark mystery is about to unfold, involving a reclusive toymaker who lives in a gigantic mansion filled with mechanical beings and shadows of the past.

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.

It begins with a rumor, an exciting whisper. Anything to break the tedium of the harem for the shah's eldest daughter. People speak of a man with a face so vile, it would make a hangman faint, but a voice as sweet as an angel's kiss. A master of illusion and stealth. A masked performer known only as Vachon. For once the truth will outshine the tales. On her birthday the shah gifts his eldest daughter, Afsar, a circus. With the circus comes a man who will change everything.

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force. Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence. Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels.