Historical Horror Fiction

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

An eerie and compelling ghost story set on the dark wilds of the Yorkshire moors. For fans of The Witchfinder's Sister or The Silent Companions, this Gothic tale will weave its way into your imagination and chill you to the bone. Maybe you've heard tales about Scarcross Hall, the house on the old coffin path that winds from village to moor top. They say there's something up here, something evil. Mercy Booth isn't afraid. The moors and Scarcross are her home and lifeblood.

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.

Agatha Blair has been a governess with the Everards for nearly two years. She is plain, and she is secretly in love with the boring, brooding brother of her wards. Benedict Everard is the eldest of all the Everard children. His sisters call him the beast.

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.

A gripping gothic page-turner told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating voice. In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles.

They're an iconic part of history's most celebrated birth. But what do we really know about the Three Kings of the Nativity, besides the fact that they followed a star to Bethlehem bearing strange gifts? The Bible has little to say about this enigmatic trio. But leave it to Seth Grahame-Smith, the brilliant and twisted mind behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to take a little mystery, bend a little history, and weave an epic tale.

Home is where the horror is... Jilted thriller writer Lady Violet Thorn has withdrawn to the Suffolk market town of Montford with two servants and her leading character, the adventuress Ruby Gibson, for company. Violet’s peace is disturbed when a stranger asks her for help, claiming that a friend is being kept prisoner in her own home. Her visitor seems so afraid that Violet, despite her scepticism, is persuaded to investigate.

The Mercy of Thin Air entwines two heartbreaking and redemptive love stories that echo across three generations and culminates in a finish that will leave readers breathless. It is a poignant and brilliant first novel that beautifully captures the nature of love and shows how it transcends all barriers, even death.

An elderly couple living in Victorian London struggle against despair as their small resources dwindle. When an eccentric and mysterious gentleman answers their advertisement for a lodger, they celebrate. But as women begin dying at the hands of "The Avenger", they start to suspect something too horrific for words.

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.

1851, Angel Meadow Asylum. Dr. Rutherford, principal physician to the insane, is found dead, his head bashed in, his ears cut off, his lips and eyes stitched closed. The police direct their attention towards Angel Meadow's inmates, but to Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain the crime is an act of calculated retribution, rather than of madness. To discover the truth Jem and Will must pursue the story through the darkest corners of the city.

1903. A darkness has descended on London. A series of grisly murders are uncovered, trophies taken, bodies arranged and soon there are whispers of Jack the Ripper’s return. A new client arrives at Baker Street seeking Sherlock Holmes’s help: Dr. Jekyll claims his friend has been wrongfully accused of the hideous crimes, a friend called Mr. Edward Hyde, whose very existence relies on a potion administered by the doctor himself. But the case becomes more complicated, more unsettling than simply proving Mr. Hyde’s innocence.

From New York Times best-selling authors and illustrators Mike Mignola and Tom Sniegoski come two thrilling antiheroes: Grim Death and Bill the Electrocuted Criminal, battling against crime. An uneasiness festers upon the city streets, threatening the peace and safety of law-abiding citizens. A war is escalating, and it seems as though the good and righteous are being crushed beneath the unholy weight of evil's onslaught.

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.

Having survived the harrowing experience of her courtship, Isla must now make a decision - a decision that will affect the course of her life and that, if she chooses unwisely, indeed might end that life before it's truly begun. But before she can take control of her future, there are things she needs to know about the lover who remains so much a stranger. Is this dark, tormented man merely misunderstood? Or is he, in fact, the Devil made flesh? What truly motivates him - and what does he want from her?

There’s a certain kind of silence when you wake in the deep of night, in a strange bed, knowing that someone else is in the room. And seventeen-year-old May has just awoken to...what? A ghost girl. A girl with May’s face, hair, and complexion. A ghostly twin named Cristofana. And this twin wants a favor of May: Come to Old Florence; come to the year 1348. In modern-day Florence for the summer, May is soon seduced into saying yes. And when she encounters a brooding medieval painter, her curiosity about the past explodes into desire.

With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold.

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future. Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times. At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of these shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

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.