Gothic Fiction combines elements of horror, romance and the supernatural to create tales that are designed to keep readers shivering on the edge of their seats. Enjoy these recently published gothic stories
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid
“In Austen’s posthumously published Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland is a romantic, imaginative seventeen-year-old dazzled by her first foray into Bath’s high-stakes social scene.
She thinks her dreams have come true when she falls in love with the dashing and kind Henry Tilney. When Henry invites Catherine to his family’s grandly mysterious ancestral country home, unanswered questions about his family’s past start to emerge. She begins to suspect that her new flame’s father may have murdered his wife, and that in entering into her new romance she may be risking not just her heart, but her life..”
Cloud by Eric McCormack
“Harry Steen, a businessman travelling in Mexico, ducks into an old bookstore to escape a frightening deluge. Inside, he makes a serendipitous discovery: a mid-nineteenth-century account of a sinister storm cloud that plagued an isolated Scottish village and caused many gruesome and unexplainable deaths. Harry knows the village well; he travelled there as a young man to take up a teaching post following the death of his parents. It was there that he met the woman whose love and betrayal have haunted him every day since. Presented with this astonishing record, Harry resolves to seek out the ghosts of his past and return to the very place where he encountered the fathomless depths of his own heart.”
Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore
“Ellen Trawton is running away from it all – quite literally. She is due to get married to a man she doesn’t love, her job is dragging her down and her interfering mother is getting on her nerves. So she escapes to the one place she know her mother won’t follow her – to her aunt’s house in rural Ireland. Once there, she uncovers a dark family secret – and a future she never knew she might have. Meanwhile, Caitlin Macausland is mourning the future she can never have. She died tragically in what the village thinks is suspicious circumstances, and now she is stuck in a limbo, unable to move on. And between the two of them is an old lighthouse – the scene of so much tragedy.”
Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James
“In 1919, Kitty Weekes, pretty, resourceful, and on the run, falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams. But something more is going on at Portis House—its plaster is crumbling, its plumbing makes eerie noises, and strange breaths of cold waft through the empty rooms. It’s known that the former occupants left abruptly, but where did they go? And why do the patients all seem to share the same nightmare, one so horrific that they dare not speak of it? “
