British Gothic

NEW AND IMPROVED SECOND EDITION - 2025 Initially published by Peter Owen Publishers, 2013 When nine-year-old Henry III ascended to the throne of a kingdom on the verge of collapse, none could have predicted his fifty-six-year reign would become the longest in medieval England. The first child king to inherit the English throne since the Norman Conquest, his reign (1216–72) transformed the kingdom politically and culturally during one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Though often overshadowed by his father, King John, and his son, Edward I, Henry III was one of England’s ...

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 ...

How did Sherlock Holmes get himself into such a situation? His life is threatened. His only escape is to pretend to be catatonic. And in that state, to solve a heinous crime. It began when a barrister came to Holmes and told him that his wife may have disappeared ... or he may have murdered her. He doesn't know. He has catatonic spells, and there are hours of his life he cannot remember. Was his wife's first husband murdered? What went on inside the Bethlem Royal Hospital when the wife, the husband, and the maid were all patients in that famous institution? Sherlock Holmes suspects that the...

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, a young woman high of intellect and low in patience, Betty Stevens and a lovelorn hound called Talleyrand, 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 ...

The multi million copy bestseller that has enthralled generations of readers. A haunting tale of obsessive love. A mesmerizing psychological thriller. In Monte Carlo, our unnamed heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned...

WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” (The Washington Post) “[China Miéville’s] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in...

"Stephanie Racine's talented narration helps create an atmospheric backdrop for this dark mystery."- AudioFile This program is read by longtime narrator Stephanie Racine who has voiced numerous New York Times, U.S. and U.K. bestselling audiobooks. Author Alice Feeney reads the acknowledgments on...

Arias and Apparitions Retired opera diva Melody Vance thought her greatest challenge would be swapping the spotlights of Covent Garden for the leaky pipes of Vance Manor. Inheriting her late Aunt Agatha’s crumbling Victorian B&B in the heart of the Cotswolds was supposed to be a quiet encore. But when a guest screams about a spectral figure pointing toward a floorboard and turns up dead the next morning; without a mark on him the village of Upper Skimmington starts whispering about the "Vance Curse." Armed with her aunt’s hidden journals and a family legacy of ghost-hunting she’s long...

DAKOTA JOHNSON TEATIME BOOK CLUB PICK · INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER · WINNER OF THE NOTA BENE PRIZE · SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS NOMINEE A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT. "A dark, gorgeous concoction.”—New York Times “Beautiful, terrifying . . . . Destined to...

“The Shadow Key ushers us into Gothic darkness. . . . What sets this novel above your run-of-the-mill Gothic dread-fest is Stokes-Chapman’s skillful deployment . . . and above all, narrator Richard Harrington’s masterly performance. A Welshman himself, Harrington has a beautiful, dark...

London, 1888. Fog-choked streets. Lamplit alleys. A killer who moves like a shadow—and a secret far darker than history ever recorded. When barrister Montague John Druitt makes a desperate bargain with a mysterious Gentleman in black, he believes it will save his collapsing life. Instead, he becomes trapped in a waking nightmare as the pact twists his thoughts, fractures his mind, and drives him toward the Whitechapel murders that will echo through history. As the bodies multiply, Inspector Frederick Abberline follows a trail of fear through the East End, unaware that the monster he hunts...

“Told in alternating perspectives divided into 'Me,' 'You,' 'Us,' and 'Them' sections, the narrations by Baxendale and Glover perfectly match the slow build of the story. Both capture the determination, guilt, and duplicity of the characters as the plot twists.” —AudioFile Award-winning...

An Earphones Award Winner! Knives Out meets Downton Abbey! Secrets, murder, and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo—an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian—hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world, in this locked-room mystery by #1 New York Times...

To a clinical psychologist, there are no ghosts. Only guilt. Stephen Atherton lives by a strict rule: every human trauma can be diagnosed, categorized, and controlled. As a clinical psychologist specializing in prolonged grief, he knows that the human mind is a closed, predictable system. When his dog, Gyp, begins hesitating at the gates of Kelbrook Cemetery during their nightly walk, Stephen rationalizes the behavior as a simple reaction to localized scent gradients. Then, she appears. Every evening at exactly 5:15 PM, a young woman in a vintage wool coat joins Stephen on the wet gravel ...

Some doors are better left closed . . . Darkly profound and utterly chilling, Apartment 16 is a work of compulsive psychological horror from the award-winning author of The Ritual, Adam Nevill. ‘Fast becoming Britain's answer to Stephen King’ – The Guardian In Barrington House, an upmarket...

A Lady forced into marriage, a Duke with a dark reputation, an unseen enemy, lies, secrets and ‘helpful’ friends – can they find their way to love, despite it all? ***** FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED ***** Lady Ariana Torryngton was forbidden the only man she had ever loved – and has resolved to stay a spinster. But her dictatorial father, driven by his own approaching death, has arranged a marriage for her – to a man with a terrifying reputation. A marriage which she cannot avoid. Benedict Blackshaw, the Duke of Darkmire, is plagued by the rumours of dark horrors of his ancestors – ...

USA TODAY BESTSELLER This “intricately plotted, epic” (The Times, London) international bestseller—in the vein of the vivid novels of Sarah Waters and Sarah Perry—follows an orphaned fortune teller in 18th-century England as she searches for answers about her long-dead mother. Cornwall...

A house that remembers. A man who cannot forget. Some silences were never meant to end. When sceptical academic Dr Nathaniel Harrow inherits the remote Northumbrian estate of Eldershade Hall, he expects little more than dust and ruin. But within its rain-soaked walls, something waits — a consciousness built from grief, echoing the footsteps of those long dead. As winter closes in and the house begins to breathe, Harrow’s investigation into superstition becomes a confrontation with memory itself. What he uncovers is not a haunting, but a remembering — one that will demand the last ...

Full of creeping dread and suffocating unease, Dark Is When the Devil Comes is an atmospheric and chilling novel from Something in the Walls author Daisy Pearce. The woods are known as the place to avoid. What goes in, doesn’t come out. Hazel has been gone from her small hometown of Idless in...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Anna Popplewell, best known for her leading role as Susan Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia films. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Stevie Davies. Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt...