Book picks similar to
A Dark and Splendid Passion by Lady Eleanor Smith
gothic
horror
pretty-racist-literature
regency-napoleonic
The Old Man and the End of the World: Book One: Things Fall Apart
William Harrison - 2021
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride
Richard Gleaves - 2013
He's a STAR WARS fan and a history geek. He doesn't believe in ghosts or the afterlife. He doesn't believe in psychic powers or tarot cards. He doesn't believe in the Headless Horseman. But Sleepy Hollow will change all that. Because Jason Crane has a heritage to claim. Jason Crane has a Gift to discover. And Jason Crane has an old enemy who will RISE HEADLESS AND RIDE. THE JASON CRANE SERIES re-invents and re-imagines classic American ghost literature. Sleepy Hollow, Salem ("The House of the Seven Gables" and the infamous witch trials), and haunted Washington D.C. and Baltimore ("The Fall of the House of Usher" and other works of Edgar Allen Poe.) The series is set in and among the real-life sights and Halloween events of the modern-day locations. Perfect for planning Halloween tourism! Every place mentioned in Book #1 exists for you to explore: Gory Brook Road, the Tarrytown Lighthouse, the ruin of the Horseman Bridge, the grave of Washington Irving, Patriot's Park, Philipsburg Manor and the haunted Burying Ground of the Old Dutch Church. This eBook edition includes an online MAP of the sights mentioned in the story so that you can follow along or plan a trip. Step into the REAL village of Sleepy Hollow and the world of Jason Crane.
The Wild, Unwilling Wife
Barbara Cartland - 1977
Another crash of lightning reverberated in the room and now, as if she could not help it, she reached out towards Lord Vernham and instantly his arms were around her, holding her close. "You are quite safe," he whispered.She hid her face against his shoulder and he could feel her trembling.In time the rainstorm eased. She moved and instantly Lord Vernham released her."I . . . I must go back to my own room.""There is no hurry."And suddenly he yearned with all his might to make her stay, to hold her in his arms; above all to make this strange and exotic woman his . . . in reality and not only in name.
So Cold the River
Michael Koryta - 2010
As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past -- just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life. In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history -- a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay. Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored -- a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.
The Darkling Bride
Laura Andersen - 2018
The Gallagher family has called Deeprath Castle home for seven hundred years. Nestled in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, the estate is now slated to become a public trust, and book lover and scholar Carragh Ryan is hired to take inventory of its historic library. But after meeting Aidan, the current Viscount Gallagher, and his enigmatic family, Carragh knows that her task will be more challenging than she’d thought. Two decades before, Aidan’s parents died violently at Deeprath. The case, which was never closed, has recently been taken up by a new detective determined to find the truth. The couple’s unusual deaths harken back a century, when twenty-three-year-old Lady Jenny Gallagher also died at Deeprath under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind an infant son and her husband, a renowned writer who never published again. These incidents only fueled fantastical theories about the Darkling Bride, a local legend of a sultry and dangerous woman from long ago whose wrath continues to haunt the castle. The past catches up to the present, and odd clues in the house soon have Carragh wondering if there are unseen forces stalking the Gallagher family. As secrets emerge from the shadows and Carragh gets closer to answers—and to Aidan—could she be the Darkling Bride’s next victim?
Mask of the Macabre
David Haynes - 2013
But what secret does it hide?Doctor Harvey – Bethlem lunatic asylum’s newest patient has a story to tell, but how will he tell it to his doctor? Memento Mori – A photographer is given a mysterious assignment with disturbing consequences.The New Costume. – The entertainer discovers a new string to his bow and gives the finest performance of his career.(13,000 words in total)
The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks - 1984
Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.
The Inn On The Marsh
Lena Kennedy - 1989
Talk of Dumb Lukey's crazed acts and the romance between Lucinda and Joe Lee, the Thames bargee. Talk of the Crimea and the terror of Napoleon.At the tavern, hard-headed Beatrice and her sister Dot care for their invalid father and for Lucinda, their pretty orphaned niece. The inn is their livelihood but village business is ever Beat's business too. And now some dark cloud has descended on them all . . .
Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories
Charles Beaumont - 2015
Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.
Mindgame
Anthony Horowitz - 2001
A thriller that actually manages to thrill, and a very dark comedy that twists and spirals towards a completely unexpected ending. This is one play where seeing isn't quite believing and reading the text is the only way to uncover all the clues.
Winter Tide
Ruthanna Emrys - 2017
government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to the desert, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, and they emerged without a past or a future.The government that stole Aphra's life now needs her help. FBI agent Ron Spector believes that Communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets from Miskatonic University, secrets that could turn the Cold War hot in an instant, and hasten the end of the human race.Aphra must return to the ruins of her home, gather scraps of her stolen history, and assemble a new family to face the darkness of human nature.
Take this Woman
Josephine Cox - 1990
In the tiny front parlour fourteen-year-old Laura Blake watches her beloved father die. But not before he tells her she will make something of her life. Laura never forgets his words. Yet her path to success proves to be a rocky one. Forced to trundle a cart around the back streets, selling other folk's cast-offs to support her family, Laura learns enough to start work in her uncle's furniture shop. But then fate deals another cruel blow when Laura is brutally raped. Bearing the child of her attacker in secret, she vows to make the world pay for its injustice towards her.As she grows older her protective shell hardens even as her beauty blossoms, and her new toughness helps her forge a successful career in the antiques business. But it is in affairs of the heart that Laura stumbles...
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde - 1890
The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - 1818
This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.