Gothic Historical Fiction

When Cooper McQueen wakes up from a night with a beautiful stranger, it's to discover he's been robbed. The only item stolen: a million-dollar bottle of bourbon. The thief, a mysterious woman named Paris, claims the bottle is rightfully hers. After all, the label itself says it's property of the Maddox family, who owned and operated Red Thread Bourbon distillery since the last days of the Civil War, until the company went out of business for reasons no one knows...no one except Paris.

In Victorian London, where traveling sideshows are the very pinnacle of entertainment, there is no more coveted ticket than Ashe and Pretorius' Carnivale of Curiosities. Each performance is a limited engagement, and London's elite boldly dare the dangerous streets of Southwark to witness the Carnivale's astounding assemblage of marvels. For a select few, however, the real show begins behind the curtain. Rumors abound that the show’s proprietor, Aurelius Ashe, is more than an average magician. It's said that for the right price, he can make any wish come true.

1927: Mary Rourke—a Hollywood studio fixer—is called urgently to the palatial home of Norma Carlton, one of the most recognizable stars in American silent film. Norma has been working on the secret film everyone is openly talking about…a terrifying horror picture called The Devil’s Playground that is rumored to have unleashed a curse on everyone involved in the production. Mary finds Norma’s cold, dead body, and she wonders for just a moment if these dark rumors could be true.

Haunted Montague by Harper Stanwick, Sr. is a gripping mystery fiction novel set in the eerie, fog-shrouded valleys of the English countryside during the early 20th century. This chilling story of secrets, shadows, and psychological suspense will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Explore the haunting mystery surrounding Montague Hall, a sprawling estate with a dark past. Follow Major Sauer and his friends as they uncover secrets buried deep within the ancient walls of the house. Encounter eerie apparitions, unsettling whispers, and chilling discoveries that will leave ...

Caroline Verlaine knows something is wrong. Her sister has gone missing, and no one can tell her why. The only option is to go where Roma was last seen—an estate with a deadly history. The Stacy family has lived off the Dover coast for generations, carefully navigating the treacherous quick sands nearby. But the sands aren't Caroline's biggest threat. Everyone here has a secret, especially the enigmatic young heir Napier Stacy. No matter where Caroline turns, the ground she walks is dangerous.

The House on Thornhallow Moor (Book One of the Between Heartbeats Series) On the wind-swept cliffs overlooking Blackwater Hollow stands Thornhallow Moor—a house bound by secrets older than the sea. When Clara Wren returns to the neglected Victorian estate of her childhood, she expects memories, perhaps even closure. But the house has waited patiently for her arrival, harboring more than just dust and echoes of the past. Whispers drift through empty rooms, footprints glisten with seawater, and in the shadows stands Silas Vale—a ship’s captain lost to a storm over a century ago. Bound ...

Bubble, bubble, toil, and murder... When a woman is found dead near her village in Norfolk, the verdict is suicide. Not everyone agrees. Detective James Simpson is ordered to investigate and he brings Agatha Aston, Betty Simpson and Talleyrand the hound, with him. They stumble across a tale of murder that stretches back two centuries. Part occult story, part murder mystery - this creepy tale is steeped in witchcraft and strange rural festivals where everything is not as it seems. The second Agatha Aston murder mystery is full of laughs, twists and things that go bump in the night. Golden ...

Forever untangling the branches of her strange family tree, Edwina Blackwood is at a turning point. Her parents’ disappearances still strike her as unaccountably odd. Her sister’s questionable life and untimely death have left her shaken. Spellfire has transformed her home and livelihood to ash. And now a devious stalker is on her trail. With supernatural detective Ian Cameron by her side, Edwina can’t get out of London fast enough.

Tabby has a peculiar gift: She can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous. As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances. Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery.

England, 1881. Hereford Cathedral stands sentinel over the city, keeping its secrets, holding long forgotten souls in its stony embrace. Hecate Cavendish speeds through the cobbled streets on her bicycle, skirts hitched daringly high, heading for her new life as Assistant Librarian. But this is no ordinary collection of books. The cathedral houses an ancient chained library, wisdom guarded for centuries, mysteries and stories locked onto its worn, humble shelves. The most prized artifact, however, is the medieval world map which hangs next to Hecate’s desk.

There is only one way to travel across the Wastelands: on the Trans-Siberian Express, a train as famous for its luxury as for its danger. The train is never short of passengers, eager to catch sight of Wastelands creatures more miraculous and terrifying than anything they could imagine. But on the train's last journey, something went horribly wrong, though no one seems to remember what exactly happened. Not even Zhang Weiwei, who has spent her life onboard and thought she knew all of the train’s secrets.

In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over. But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma.

1920s England. Sarah Piper’s lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist an obsessed ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, and scarred by World War I—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of the nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is said to haunt the barn where she committed suicide.

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery.

London, 1925. Glamorous medium Gloria Sutter made her fortune helping the bereaved contact loved ones killed during the Great War. Now she's been murdered at one of her own séances, after leaving a message requesting the help of her former friend and sole rival, Ellie Winter. Ellie doesn't contact the dead—at least, not anymore. She specializes in miraculously finding lost items. Still, she can't refuse the final request of the only other true psychic she has known. Now Ellie must delve into Gloria's secrets and plunge back into the world of hucksters, lowlifes, and fakes.

In the fog-laden streets of Whitechapel, something far deadlier than Jack the Ripper hunts the night… Scarlet Blackwood never believed in monsters—until the night she met one. When a savage attack leaves her teetering between death and something… other, she finds herself drawn into the dark world of Dorian Thorne, a brooding and enigmatic man with secrets as deadly as the city itself. London trembles beneath whispers of a ruthless killer, but the true danger lurks in the shadows far older than the city’s gaslit streets. At the heart of it all sits Ambrose Fairchild, a hunter whose ...

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive Doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed.

When Henry Irving decides to open the Lyceum, his own London theater, with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Abraham Stoker as his assistant. Together, Irving and Stoker fall under the spell of Ellen Terry, a dazzlingly talented Shakespearean actress, known to all as a proto-feminist, and the lives of all three become intertwined with the Lyceum and each other.

Yorkshire, 1843. When disgraced former schoolmaster John Eyre arrives at Thornfield Hall to take up a position as tutor to two peculiar young boys, he enters a world unlike any he's ever known. Darkness abounds, punctuated by odd bumps in the night, strange creatures on the moor, and a sinister silver mist that never seems to dissipate. And at the center of it all, John's new employer - a widow as alluring as she is mysterious.

Thea Knight loves a spot of mischief. She especially loves her current mischief: masquerading as her sister, while finalizing her scheme to expose the dastardly knaves whose lies ruined her life. Then big, bad-tempered Lord Luxborough upends her game by maneuvering her into marriage. But it's her sister’s name on the license, so the marriage won’t be valid. Thea’s idea? Keep pretending to be her sister until she can run away.