The Turn of the Key is the fifth novel by the incomparable Ruth Ware, and it tells the story of a young woman who answers a notice for employment and finds herself travelling down a dark and progressively disturbing path. The advertisement seems too good to be true. The au pair position pays extremely well,…
In The Governess of Penwythe Hall, life circumstances force a young woman to return to the community she previously fled. The first in Sarah E. Ladd’s new Cornwall series, this Regency era gothic combines a light mystery and sweet romance, delivering a tale sure to please the author’s many fans. Delia Greythorne’s first marriage ended…
The Lost History of Dreams, Kris Waldherr’s gothic, romantic drama is not a happy book, yet it’s strangely captivating. Former Oxford scholar Robert Highstead has an unusual occupation – photographing corpses and the dying and making them look lifelike as possible. And he has a problem that complicates that profession – he can see ghosts…
Ann Howard Creel’s southern gothic mystery tale The River Widow combines homespun drama with wicked mystery. It’s a superb tale, but it’s not without its problems. When we first meet Adah Branch, it’s 1937, the Great Depression is ongoing, and she’s trying to salvage what she can from an oncoming flood ready to decimate her…
Gothic novels aren’t always my thing, but every once in awhile, I find myself craving a story set in a spooky old house on the English moors. Fortunately, the last time I had such a craving, The Au Pair by Emma Rous was here waiting for me, and it was everything I was hoping for…
Joan Aiken is renowned for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series and her Jane Austen sequel novels. The Five-Minute Marriage is not as well known, and so I came upon it completely by chance when a fellow blogger recommended it. The book proved to be a rather lucky find. Miss Philadelphia (Delphie) Carteret and her…
Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. Carmilla was actually first published in 1872 some twenty-six years before the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and is a Victorian Gothic lesbian tale. Gothic novels have various devices…
Stories about reincarnation have both fascinated and terrified me ever since I read The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser in high school. Therefore, it was with equal parts trepidation and excitement that I picked up Cat Winter’s Yesternight, a book about a child psychologist investigating claims of reincarnation in post-WWI Oregon. The story is an effective…
When I picked this book for a blog I was writing on Inspirational Romances I wasn’t sure what to expect. The author was one I had never read and while the cover was lovely, the back blurb described a standard historical romance plot. Dawn at Emberwilde proved to be much more than just a typical…
The literary world is absolutely ripe these days with retellings. Retellings of fairy tales, retellings of classics, adding vampires, demons, zombies, what-have-you. Jane Steele, instead of adding zombies to the source material, uses the classic Jane Eyre as an inspiration to a new story and a new Jane. A Jane who also happens to be…