Victorian Horror

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book that changed the world. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and a movie starring Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley, Monster is a brilliant fictionalized biography akin to The Other Boleyn Girl. Two centuries ago this year, the young woman who invented science fiction was only 20 when she wrote the book that became Frankenstein. Mary Shelley said, “People ask how I, then a young girl, could think of, and dilate upon, so hideous subject?”

Emma Parrish accepts a position no one else dares, as governess to the son of Lord Anthony Craven, the castle’s dark master. The mystery of Anthony Craven’s shadowy past lurk behind the locked doors of the estate’s forbidden Round Tower. Mysterious lights flash there in the night. The servants whisper warnings of death. Anthony himself warns Emma there is only danger to be found in his sensual embrace. Powerfully drawn to the dangerously alluring Anthony, Emma finds herself unable to deny her deepest yearnings.

Destitute and desperate, Catherine Weston accepts the summons from her childhood friend Madeline St. Aubyn to attend her at Cairncroft Abbey. Madeline's health is in a poor state, and she is terrified of her cousin Gabriel. But Gabriel has quite a different effect on Catherine, stirring longings and desires she believed long buried. Then a young woman is found dead, and Madeline's ravings point to a link between this horrific crime and Gabriel - and Catherine must decide if he is a man worthy of her love or a sinister stranger determined to make her his next victim.

Elizabeth Canham accepts a position at Burndale Academy, an isolated girl's school where she meets mysterious widower Griffin Fairfax, a man dogged by dark rumors who both frightens and fascinates her. Soon, a woman is found dead in the nearby woods - the victim of a brutal murder...a murder that bears terrifying similarity to others. Then Beth discovers all the victims were intimately connected to Griffin. Beth’s heart tells her Griffin cannot be the charming, seductive killer stalking the night, stealing women’s hearts...and lives.

Katherine O'Donnell was born with a disfiguring strawberry birthmark across the bottom of her face. In 1880s London, that was enough to discourage suitors. Love was something for which she yearned, but never found within her reach. Out of necessity, she became adept at hiding inside her home and behind makeups she formulated and applied herself. When tragedy upended her modest life and dumped her out onto the streets, she was bereft of options. She answered an advertisement for a mortuary assistant.

Lost on the moors on a snowy night, a gentleman boards a passing coach with relief. Then he takes a closer look at his fellow passengers. 'The Phantom Coach' is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

A no-nonsense governess returns to the family home at Christmas to celebrate the season and an upcoming wedding but learns of a curse affecting the men of the family. 'At Chrighton Abbey' is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

A pair of sisters travel to Waddonscombe in Cornwall where they enjoy their hosts’ ghost stories around the manor house fire. A cliché, perhaps? Yet events may not play out entirely as expected.   

'The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall' is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

A young man’s inheritance includes more than a house when an ebony-framed painting of a beautiful woman starts to exert a strange hold over its new owner. Could this lead to his tragic demise?

Whatever you do, don't go on to the beaches at dusk, or the Sand-Walker will come to your window at night. Such is the sinister warning given to the new lodger at the Beach Farm, a lonely house on the North Sea coast of England. But who, or what, is the Sand-Walker?

Lost in the snow on a bleak, wide moor in Northern England, a newlywed husband begins to despair he will ever see his wife again. He finds refuge with a pair of mysterious strangers, who direct him to a remote crossroads where the night mail coach is due to pass by. Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892) was a prolific journalist, traveler, and Egyptologist, as well as a hugely popular English novelist of the Victorian era.

A duke who has imprisoned himself in an attic for nine years is in need of a wife...Evander Meyrick, the Duke of Sutherton, has lived the past 13 years under a curse. He didn’t know just how bad the curse was until every lady he married died within a year of their wedding day. Now he has a step-daughter, Tabitha, who is ready for her first Season, and he longs to give her something he can’t have for himself: A normal life. A spinster who thought her best years were behind her may find a second chance so long as the curse doesn’t touch her...

Mallon de Wolfe, formidable, apuesto y con un fragmento de hielo donde debería estar su corazón, regresa a Dartmoor. Un lugar vasto, árido y peligroso. Un lugar donde los secretos se niegan a permanecer enterrados. Mallon ha prometido conquistar las traiciones de su juventud, pero se enfrenta a un nuevo peligro a medida que crece su atracción por la misteriosa Condesa Rosseline. ¿Podrán ambos escapar del dominio venenoso de su pasado? 

Celia Renton, a poor relation, is summoned to Sorrowmoor, a gloomy estate owned by her cousin, Connall Rothwell. But all is not well at the house. A mysterious death of the master's brother, a master with demons, and a deadly enemy await Celia. Even as her heart is torn with mistrust of the master of the house, danger lurks behind handmade dolls and treacherous smiles. Will Celia live to learn the secrets of Sorrowmoor?

Sixteen modern fiction superstars shine a startling light on the romance and pain of the infamous literary pair Heathcliff and Cathy. Short stories to stir the heart and awaken vital conversation about love.

Available for the first time in 125 years, the Lost Novels of Nellie Bly! Pioneering undercover journalist Nellie Bly is rightly famous for exposing society's ills. From brutal insane asylums to corrupt politicians, she exposed all manner of frauds and charlatans. She was also a skilled interviewer and reporter. What no one has known was that she was also a novelist. This is because, of the twelve novels Bly wrote between 1889 and 1895, eleven have been lost. Until now.

Forced to flee his home and his mother’s murderous rage when he removes his mask, his greatest desire is to be loved for himself. At the tender age of seven, he must fight for survival in a hostile world where the threat of starvation is the least of the abuses he suffers. Yet, time and again, in his naivety, he extends trust to someone he believes can fill his need for affection and acceptance. Betrayed in every instance, his anger grows.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Before Twilight and True Blood, even before Buffy and Anne Rice and Bela Lugosi, vampires haunted the 19th century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel, Dracula. Michael Sims brings together the very best vampire stories of the Victorian era - from England, America, France, Germany, Transylvania, and even Japan - into a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety.