Historical Horror Fiction

As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another. Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early 19th-century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a nave young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry.

London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate newborn at the Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the daughter she has never known. Dreading the worst, that she has died in care, she is astonished to discover someone pretending to be Bess has already claimed her. Her life is turned upside-down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl - and why.

Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy, and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor, and awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea's charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted by the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea.

Hay-on-Wye, 1400. War is brewing in the Welsh borders. Catrin is on the brink of womanhood and falling in love for the first time. Her father is a soothsayer playing a dangerous game, playing on the mixed loyalties and furious rivalries between Welsh princes and English lords. For 200 years the Welsh people have lain under the English yoke, dreaming of independence. And finally it looks as though the charismatic Owain Glyndwr may be the man legend talks of.

A collection of Smith's apace adventure stories featuring Captain Volmar, including the never before published novella, "Red World of Polaris."

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite…an appetite they say tortures him still.

London, 1852. Genevieve Timmons has made her living posing as a spiritualist to swindle wealthy believers, until one misstep lands her in a jail cell awaiting the noose. Then a stranger, Mr. Lockhart, arrives to make her a peculiar offer. The lord he serves, Mr. Pemberton, has been grieving the mysterious death of his beautiful bride-to-be for six months. Although no foul play was ever uncovered, the young lord is convinced that she was murdered.

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.

England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to Wych Elm House, the family's estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband's origins...and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths' past is just the beginning.

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.

Lady Phoebe Batten is pretty, vivacious, and yearning for a social life befitting the sister of a powerful duke. But because she is almost completely blind, her overprotective brother insists that she have an armed bodyguard by her side at all times—the very irritating Captain Trevillion.

It’s 1875, and Alva Webster has perfected her stiff upper lip after three years of being pilloried in the presses of two continents over fleeing her abusive husband. Now his sudden death allows her to return to New York to make a fresh start, restoring Liefdehuis, a dilapidated Hyde Park mansion, and hopefully her reputation at the same time. However, fresh starts aren’t as easy as they seem, as Alva discovers when stories of a haunting at Liefdehuis begin to reach her.

Norman Mailer's dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer's reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle.

Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor. But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband.

In 1861, foreign ships have forced open Japan's doors to the West. Missionaries have come to Japan; they are there to save men's souls, but to the Japanese they are there to spread false religion. The young Lord Genji, who possesses the power of prophecy, flees to the Cloud of Sparrows castle, where he shelters two American missionaries. Together with a legendary swordsman and an enigmatic geisha, they embark on a harrowing journey through a dangerous landscape to prepare for a final battle.

Mercia, 788 AD. In the grand Saxon halls of Mercia, King Offa rules with cold ambition. His youngest daughter, Eadburh, is destined for an arranged marriage, but with reckless spirit, her heart is taken by a Welsh prince, a man she can never be matched with and who is quickly and cruelly taken from her. Offa’s Dyke, 2021. In a cottage hidden amongst the misty Welsh hills of Offa’s Dyke, Bea Dalloway is called to help Simon Armstrong, who is searching for peace. Instead he finds himself disturbed by unsettling noises and visions.

Favel Farrington meets Roc Pendorric on the idyllic Mediterranean island of Capri, where she was raised and lives with her father. Roc sweeps her off her feet, taking her from her home by an emerald sea to the ancient family home of the Pendorrics, in Cornwall. His sister and her family await them with open arms, welcoming young Favel. She is the much anticipated Bride of Pendorric, a name that amuses and flatters her. The castle is beautiful in its way, but the atmosphere is foreboding. Roc's twin nieces begin watching her carefully; even the stones in the courtyard seem to have eyes.

Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siecle wonders...and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she's sent to London to chaperone her younger sister, aspiring art critic Dorina. Unfortunately for Evadne, she soon learns too much about all of it when Dorina meets their uncle's friend, Lady Henrietta "Henry" Wotton. A semi-respectable aristocrat in public, in private she is secretly in the thrall of a demon.

Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her. Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.