Showing results by author "Marilyn Ross" in All Categories

Still trying to uncover the secret of her own identity, Victoria Winters continues her life at Collinwood. The unexpected arrival of mysterious strangers at the brooding manor instills terrible fears in her. Horrified at their lies and their evil, menacing gestures, Victoria wonders if these guest have come to kill her. Terror shrouds Collinwood as Victoria finds herself the prey of these cruel tormentors.

Barnabas Collins, the 175 year-old vampire, is introduced in this story of gothic suspense. Your blood will grow cold as you listen to the never-before-told story of the foggy night in 1899 when Barnabas Collins first arrived in Collinwood. You’ll chill to the full horror of the real truth about Barnabas - a secret so terrible that it could not be revealed until now.

Despite warnings from the townspeople, Victoria Winters accepts the offer to come to the strange Collinwood as Governess. For some curious reason, she feels the secret of her past may be uncovered in the bleak manor high on Widow’s Hill. From the Moment she arrives, Victoria becomes the target of someone in the house determined to destroy her. As the wind moans and the rain lashes around the isolated Collinwood, Victoria, without friends in the manor, feels death close in on her - a choking, frightening death.

Victoria Winters at last feels she has a clue to her own identity when she meets elderly Henry Collins. He secretly gives her the jewels which once belonged to his lost love - a woman Victoria strangely resembles. After receiving the gift, Victoria is suddenly terrified by attacks on her life which are masked as accidents. Surrounded by danger, Victoria wonders if she is to be the victim of ruthless thieves - or a hidden murderer desperate enough to keep her from learning about her past.

Maggie Evans visits the Collins family graveyard and is transported back in time to the year 1880. There she awakes, an amnesia victim, at a Collinwood she barely recognizes. All that seems familiar are the house itself and the family’s guest, Barnabas Collins. Slowly, Maggie learns she is trapped in a nightmare. She has fallen into the hands of Dr. Giles Collins, whose mysterious experiments with human blood have already taken several lives. Now she is slated to be his next victim. Though Maggie is warned by the others that he is a vampire, she turns to Barnabas for help.

Victoria stood on the ledge known as Suicide Cliffs and stared down at the raging surf and jagged rocks below. Next to her stood Professor Mark Veno, a mysterious visitor to Collinwood. He spoke to her in a low, sinister voice. “Think of all those who threw themselves from these very rocks.”His eyes seemed to burn into hers.

While searching for the woman who will replace his long-lost Josette, and thus end the terrible curse upon him, Barnabas meets lovely Clare Duncan. The story, set in 1870, of their romance - and of the terror it brings to the beautiful young noblewoman - is a tale of gothic suspense which will chill and delight the legions of Barnabas Collins fans.

After falling in love with beautiful heiress Diana Hastings, Barnabas Collins makes a desperate attempt to find a cure for his vampire curse. He summons to Collinwood Dr. Rudolf Padrel, a strange scientist who claims he can develop a serum that will make Barnabas a normal man again. But as time passes, Barnabas wonders if the mysterious scientist isn’t merely using him for his own evil ends. Graves in the family cemetery are desecrated and a young girl is found murdered. Barnabas is denounced by the villagers, who try to storm Collinwood.

Upset over the death of Ernest Collins, Victoria begins to believe that phantoms are haunting her. Are they figments of her imagination? As the threats to her life become very real, she is forced to accept the horrifying truth. The strange figures are not phantoms, but the bodies of Derek and Esther Collins, murdered more than a century ago. They were unwittingly released from their coffins by a shaft of moonlight - and doomed to roam the earth as “the living dead”.

Heiress Betty Ward is worried about her twin sister, who has eloped with Jeremy Frene. She follows them from Paris to Frene estate at Collinwood - but arrives too late! Her twin is dead, victim of a mysterious illness. Her body has been sealed in a crystal coffin and kept in a darkened room. Jeremy swears that because her ghost returns to the castle each night, he refuses to bury the coffin.

When Quentin Collins invited Lara Balfour to Collinwood, they knew each other only from the correspondence that had grown out of Quentin’s admiration for the haunting waltz her father had composed. Soon Quentin professes to love Lara - but is his love really a threat? His first wife’s throat was torn out by a wolflike creature who escaped capture. Since then, other young women have died in the same grisly fashion…in the full of the moon, when Quentin’s mysterious “attacks” occur. Lara faces the terrifying possibility that her brooding, sensitive host is a werewolf.

Professor Gerald Collins returns to Collinwood from an archaeological expedition to Mexico with several crates of animals - giant rats, poisonous snakes, and rare lizards. His daughter, Irma, turns to Barnabas for help. She fears her father also brought back a Quetzalcoatl, the terrible, cursed feathered serpent of Aztec legend. Suddenly, a mysterious murderer strikes at Collinwood, and a feathered serpent is reported flying over the area.

The speaker is too high on LSD to explain what he means, but at one time he had been in love with Ruth's sister, Mary, whose sun sign is Aquarius. And it is Mary's disappearance that brought Ruth to Cranston House, a sinister, run-down hotel occupied by Dr. Eric Palmer and his youthful drug cultists. Ruth is told that Mary is "away for a while". But no one will say where, or for how long. Suddenly Ruth herself becomes a virtual prisoner. The more she learns about the dangerous drug experiments Palmer sponsors, the more terrified Ruth becomes.

Was a noose tightening around a horrified Deborah Foster? It was the night of evil ritual. The worshippers of the devil danced around the ruined abbey, now transformed into a temple of terror. Deborah had come there hoping to unmask her sister’s killer. Suddenly against her will, Deborah felt herself succumbing tothe unholy spell woven by the frenzied witches. Relentlessly they began to encircle her. Panic gripped her for she knew they had chosen her as their next victim.

Terror reigns at Collinwood when several patients at a nearby psychiatric clinic at which Barnabas Collins is a patient are stabbed to death. Each victim's forehead is marked with a scorpion, the zodiacal symbol of death. Then Diana Collins, another relative of the Collins family who is undergoing psychiatric treatment at the hospital, finds a bloody knife in her room. Diana, whose astrological sign is Scorpio, is afraid that she may have committed the murders during one of her blackouts.

David Collins and Amy Jennings, two charming, innocent children are suddenly turned into demons. At first their pranks only annoy Maggie Evans, their governess. But soon she realizes they have become malicious, bent on destroying all of Collinwood. Convinced the children are possessed by a mysterious, supernatural power, and frightened for her life, Maggie turns for help to Barnabas Collins.

In an alien spaceship hidden in a swamp near Collinwood, Roger Collins and his friend, space scientist Murdock Gray, lie bound and gagged - yet no one even knows they are missing! For their captors are able to change shapes at will, and two of them have "become" Roger and Murdock. Although Elizabeth and Carolyn sense a difference, they can't guess that they are at the mercy of beings who will stop at nothing to prevent the next US space flight under Murdock's direction.

Barnabas befriends lovely Paula Jennings right after her marriage to strange, mysterious Christopher Jennings. He feels protective towards the lovely heiress because he suspects Christopher is the werewolf who has been ravaging the countryside. When Christopher is joined by Melissa Henry (the reincarnation of the evil Angelique), Barnabas is certain Paula is in terrible danger. Barnabas knows he can defeat the evil werewolf. But will his powers be stronger than those of the beautiful and deadly Angelique?

Before the blizzard cuts Collinwood off from the rest of the world, Barnabas Collins arrives there from England, bringing with him his friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, who hopes to find a new life where no one knows he is the son of London's most savage murderer. Another stranger also finds refuge from the storm at Collinwood. He calls himself Paul Faron, private detective - but to Barnabas, he is Quentin Collins, victim of the werewolf curse.

Ellen awoke to see a ghostly figure moving through the shadows to her bedside. "Ellen!" Her name was whispered hoarsely, but she recognized the voice. It was Aunt Kate's. "What's wrong?" Ellen asked, getting out of bed. "Dying...." Ellen sprang to her and eased her aunt down on the bed. "What is it?" "Danger...vampire."