Horror Gothic Thriller Mystery

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.

Dracula. A name of horror, depravity and the darkest sensuality. Yet the real Dracula was just as alluring, just as terrifying, his story not of a monster but of a man - and a contradiction. For the one they called 'The Devil's Son' was both tyrant and lawgiver, crusader and mass slaughterer, torturer and hero, lover and murderer. His tale is told by those who knew him best. The only woman he ever loved, who he must sacrifice. His closest comrade and traitor.

Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny, were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds...and remembers.

Mia: It was so close, I'd tasted it - the freedom. But the only thing I could taste now was the end. Over the last two years, I’d let all outside forces dictate my life, my feelings, my head. I’d allowed everyone to control what my punishment should be for all my wrong-doings. I’d been tested and learned my lesson. I’d paid my dues and suffered long enough. Because in the end, even the once-upon-a-damned deserved to be happy too.

A desperate young woman’s bargain with a wealthy couple is not what it seems in this gothic tale of big city dreams gone wrong from the number-one New York Times best-selling author and literary phenomenon V.C. Andrews - whose books are now major Lifetime TV movies.

While wandering the local graveyard on behalf of his wife, whom he can sense wishes him out of the house for a bit, Lawford comes across the grave of Nicholas Sabathier and experiences a nasty shock that feels something like a heart attack. But when he wakes back up in the graveyard the next morning, he returns home, goes to his bedroom, and turns to the mirror only to see that a dead Frenchman is staring back at him from the looking glass.

After the end of her marriage, Kate Granger has retreated to her parents' home on Lake Superior to pull herself together - only to discover the body of a murdered woman washed into the shallows. Tucked in the folds of the woman's curiously vintage gown is an infant, as cold and at peace as its mother. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She's seen her before. In her dreams...

For several years, time and circumstance have managed to separate Hallie Knight and her old friend Susan Trench. But when Susan disappears from her grandfather's seaside home on historic Topsail Island, it is Hallie whom Nicholas Trench calls for help. Wealthy, ill, and irascible, he refuses to believe that his beloved granddaughter and the heir to his fortune has been lost to him.

With nowhere to go, no one to help her, Leigh fled into the arms of Luke Casteel! Leigh Van Voreen had to escape from Boston's Farthinggale Manor. The foul secret she harbored within her seemed to darken her life forever. Jillian, her mother, would not believe her...and Tony Tatterton, her stepfather, had betrayed her most cruelly. But the pure devotion of Luke Casteel promised her hope and respect. Only Luke knew her deepest of secrets...only Luke would love and protect her.

This second Gothic novel in the dark Mirror Sisters trilogy continues the tale of sisterly love at its absolute worst - from the legendary New York Times best-selling author of Flowers in the Attic and the My Sweet Audrina series (now Lifetime movies). For fans of Ruth Ware ( In a Dark, Dark Wood) and Liane Moriarty ( The Husband's Secret).

Robert Reid moved his family to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in the 1990s, driven by hope, craving safety and community, and hiding a terrible secret. But despite his best efforts to fit in, Robert is always seen as an outsider. And as the legendary and violent Hebridean storms rage around him, he begins to unravel, believing his fate on the remote island of Kilmeray cannot be escaped.

Growing up in Louisiana, Gabriel’s young life is a happy one, despite the growing rift between her mother and her conniving, whiskey-drinking daddy. Her dreams for a bright future as an artist are cut short, however, when her innocence is shattered by the rich cannery owner Octavious Tate. Pregnant and desperate to spare her mother the scandal, Gabriel agrees to a shocking plan that will allow Octavious’ wife, Gladys, to claim the baby as her own and will net Gabriel’s father a huge payoff.

It’s 1852 and Margaret Lennox, a young widow, attempts to escape the shadows of her past by taking a position as governess to an only child, Louis, at an isolated country house in the west of England. But Margaret soon starts to feel that something isn’t quite right. There are strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants, and an abandoned east wing. Even stranger is the local gossip surrounding Mrs. Eversham, Louis’s widowed mother, who is deeply distrusted in the village.

"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.

When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists' retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor's dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a "waiting room for death". After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them.

Ricky Desmond has been through this all before. If he could just get through to his mother, he could convince her that he doesn't belong at Brookline. From the man who thinks he can fly to the woman who killed her husband, the other patients are nothing like him; all he did was lose his temper just a little bit, just the once. But when Ricky is selected by the sinister Warden Crawford for a very special program - a program that the warden claims will not cure him but perfect him - Ricky realizes that he may not be able to wait for his mom a second longer.

England, 1917. Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at her imposing country mansion, Greyswick - but she arrives to discover a house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion. Before long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella - sobbing in the night, little footsteps on the stairs - and as events escalate, she finds herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.

Wieland (1798) is an early American novel set in 1760s Pennsylvania. Based on a real case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the story is imbued with suspense and intrigue, adopting Gothic devices such as ventriloquism and spontaneous combustion. The satanic interloper Carwin exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, wreaking havoc over the Wieland family with disastrous consequences. A central theme in the novel is the issue of the values that formed the basis of a new democratic and republican America.

The position of lady’s companion at the grand, isolated Hemford House was meant to save Estelle Glass from the scandal of her own making. But when she arrived at the mansion and was greeted by the stern, mysterious and intimidating Mrs. Blackwell, Estelle began to see what had been meant as a punishment might possibly become more like a reward…if only she could manage to find her place in the dreary household and the service of Mrs. Virginia Hemford, the childlike beauty Estelle had been sent to serve.