Showing results for "life" in Gothic

When high school senior Charlotte agrees to babysit the Wilbanks twins, she plans to put the six-year-olds to bed early and spend a quiet night studying: the SATs are tomorrow, and checking the Native American/Alaskan Native box on all the forms won't help if she chokes on test day. But tomorrow is also Halloween, and the twins are eager to show off their costumes.

It is 1953, and Melbourne society is looking forward to coronation season, the grand balls and celebrations for the young queen-to-be. Tilly Dunnage is, however, working for a pittance in a second-rate Collins Street salon. Her talents go unappreciated, and the madame is a bully and a cheat, but Tilly has a past she is desperate to escape and good reason to prefer anonymity.

In 1890, Corrine Dixon meets and is swept away by the charms of rich, sophisticated, and handsome Garland Foxworth. After discovering that she’s pregnant, Garland does what appears to be the honorable thing and marries her in a huge wedding ceremony on the luxurious Foxworth Hall grounds while both families keep her pregnancy a secret. Now the mistress of the labyrinthine estate, Corrine discovers that nothing is what is seems. Garland is not the man she expected, and she’s uncomfortable with his intense infatuation with his deceased mother’s memory.

Chris and Cathy made such a loving home for 14-year-old Jory - so handsome, so gentle. And for Bart, who had such a dazzling imagination for a nine-year-old. Then the lights came on in the house next door. Soon the Old Lady in Black was there, watching them, guarded by her strange old butler. Soon she had Bart over for cookies and ice cream and asked him to call her "Grandmother". And soon Bart's transformation began....

The final, haunting novel, in the extraordinary story that has enthralled millions! The horror began with Flowers in the Attic, the terrifying tale of four innocent children locked away from the world by a cruel mother. The shocking fury continued with Petals on the Wind and If There be Thorns. Now V.C. Andrews has created the last dark chapter in the strange, chilling tale of passion and peril.

The grand, Gothic Wyndemere House is a labyrinth, containing as many secrets as it does corners obscured in shadow. It's home to the Davenports, a wealthy and distinguished family, and Fern Corey and her mother have lived there as servants for Fern’s entire young life. Despite their difference in station, Fern and Dr. Davenport’s son, Ryder, have always been extremely close. Which was never a problem...until they came of age.

Reformed party girl Meg Ashley leads a life of privilege, thanks to a bestselling horror novel her mother wrote decades ago. But Meg knows that the glow of their very public life hides a darker reality of lies, manipulation, and the heartbreak of her own solitary childhood. Desperate to break free of her mother, Meg accepts a proposal to write a scandalous, tell-all memoir.

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

Emotionally guarded Daphne Amos always believed she’d found a kindred spirit in her fiancé, Heath. Both very private people, they’ve kept their pasts hidden from the world, and each other, until Heath’s escalating nightmares begin to put an undeniable strain on their relationship. Determined to give their impending marriage the best chance of succeeding, Heath insists that Daphne join him on a seven-day retreat with Dr. Matthew Cerny, a psychologist celebrated for getting to the root of repressed memories.

Naomi Alderman's The Lessons reflects the truth that the lessons life teaches often come too late. Hidden away in an Oxford backstreet is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess keys to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous.

Elizabeth Murray has been condemned to burn at the stake when a strange man visits her. He offers her a deal: her soul in return for immortality. What he offers is not a normal life. To survive, Elizabeth must become Death. Elizabeth must ease the passing of all those who die, using her compassion to guide them. She accepts and, for 500 years, whirls from one death to the next. Until one day, everything changes. She - Death - falls in love. Desperate to escape from her deal, she summons the man who saved her. He agrees to release her the condition that she gives him five lives.

Stephen Norman is to inherit her father’s vast fortune and estate. She seeks to ask Leonard Everard (a wastrel) to marry her, but only to prove that she can ask a man to marry her and defy 19th-century convention which says a man can only ask a woman to marry. This sets into motion a showdown between two old rivals for her hand in marriage, as Harold An Wolf (a gentleman) is in love with her.

Beneath the light of a full moon, the Nightbloods and Seers are dancing. They are dancing as they await another Awakening, a dream that defines every witch's destiny. It doesn't matter that the coven is cheering and anticipating her turn into womanhood, because Calli doesn't want any of it.

A single sentence was all it took to define Cammy's life. They came as her beloved artist aunt was dying, a teenage Cammy standing by her bedside: 'Did your mother ever tell you about the curse?' Cammy is warned that the women in her family are destined always to lose the one they love. She thinks nothing of it - until the day when, in her late twenties, her new boyfriend is hit by a car. Convinced she is to blame, Cammy begins to investigate the one-hundred-and-fifty-year story of a family that is both ordinary and remarkable, tragic and beautiful.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide.

Anglo-Saxon England, AD 997. Brother Galen is anxious about leaving the haven of his abbey. Suddenly reconciled with his father after being disowned, he fears he will never again fit in with his estranged family. But when he’s commissioned to produce a manuscript for the king, the shy scribe has the chance to visit his relatives after three years of banishment.

Harriet Burke has long been haunted by a family scandal. Abandoned by her mother as an infant, she has grown up in the shadows of the events that led up to that scandal. But all changes when she meets the future viscount of Daneford. The dashing young Lieutenant Arthur Hammett defies his grandfather. Professing his undying love, he proposes to Harriet. Harriet quickly learns that all is not what it seems. Secrets, lies, and betrayal shatter Harriet's life, leaving Harriet little choice. She has to begin life anew....

Nine-year-old Olivia Friel is delighted to be spending the summer at Greyfriars House, a place where her parents, their family and friends are always happy. But this year there's an underlying tension that Olivia doesn't understand. Then one night she sees something she's not meant to, and accidentally lets slip a devastating betrayal. Charlotte Friel gets a call from her ailing mother, asking something she's never asked before: for Charlotte to come home. There are things Olivia needs to tell her daughter before it's too late, secrets to be shared about forgotten relatives and a mysterious house.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.