Gothic Horror Mysteries

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.

All Bram wanted was to disappear - from her old life, her family's past, and from the scandal that continues to haunt her. The only place left to go is Louth, the tiny town on the Hudson River where her uncle, James, has been renovating an old mansion. But James is haunted by his own ghosts. Months earlier, his beloved wife died in a fire that people say was set by her daughter. The tragedy left James a shell of the man Bram knew - and destroyed half the house he'd so lovingly restored. The manor is creepy, and so are the locals.

In the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca - The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers.

In 1886, a respectable young woman must acquire a husband. But Violet Pring does not want to marry. She longs to be a professional artist and live on her own terms. When her scheming mother secures a desirable marriage proposal from an eligible Brighton gentleman for her, Violet protests. Her family believes she is deranged and deluded, so she is locked away in Hillwood Grange Lunatic Asylum against her will. In her new cage, Violet faces an even greater challenge: she must escape the clutches of a sinister and formidable doctor and set herself free.

1968, Sicily. Just months after an earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. 2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter asks her friend for help to prove her father’s innocence.

Nineteen thirty-four, London. Into the decaying cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square steps aristocratic Lydia Langstone fleeing an abusive marriage. However, unknown to Lydia, a dark mystery haunts Bleeding Heart Square. What happened to Miss Penhow, the middle-aged spinster who owns the house and who vanished four years earlier? Why is a seedy plain-clothes policeman obsessively watching the square? What is making struggling journalist Rory Wentwood so desperate to contact Miss Penhow?

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.

Angela was just a baby when she was abandoned, and a children's home is no place to grow up. When manager Ray takes girls off to his 'den' in the garden, they always come back crying.... So, when wealthy couple James and Rosemary come to choose a child to adopt, Angela is desperate to escape. Years later, Angela starts to search for her birth mother, Evelyn, hoping to heal the scars of her childhood. But strange and sinister events start to unfold. And Evelyn fears she may not survive her daughter's return.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been described as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women.

Donna Weaver has put everything she has into restoring The Breakers, an old bed and breakfast on a remote stretch of beach in Galloway. Now it sits waiting - freshly painted, richly furnished, filled with flowers - for the first guests to arrive. But Donna's guests, a contentious group of estranged cousins, soon realize that they've been here before, years ago. Decades have passed, but that night still haunts them: a 16th birthday party that started with peach schnapps and ended with a girl walking into the sea.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself - and is coming close to a breakdown.

Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor Maynard Straker tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before and then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London: "Your patient must be an imposter." Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary....

It is the Autumn of Terror, 1888, in London, England. Jack the Ripper is hard at work. So what better time is there for doctors Frankenstein, Jekyll, Griffin, and Moreau to bring a dead girl back to life?

Edición sin música. El misterio de Marie Roget. Está basado en el asesinato real de Mary Cecilia Rogers, un crimen que paralizó a Nueva York debido a la violencia inusitada que el asesino volcó sobre la joven. Mary Cecilia Rogers nació en Connecticut en 1820, desapareció el 4 de octubre de 1838 en circunstancias poco claras.

There’s something in the lake at Wren Hall. At least, that’s what the locals say. Not that Meg cares much about the rumors. When she’s asked to spend Halloween weekend at the Ireland retreat of the wealthy Wren twins, she recognizes the invitation for exactly what it is: her last, and only, chance to save her spot at Greyscott’s, the exclusive British art school she attended on scholarship until last summer. Clever, beautiful, and talented, the twins are the pride of Greyscott’s, and kindhearted Lottie Wren was once Meg’s closest friend. But not anymore.

Gaston Leroux's phenomenal novel, which inspired the hit Broadway musical, remains one of the most original suspense stories ever written. Erik, a brilliant but hideously disfigured musical genius, lives in the basement of Paris's National Academy of Music, where he haunts the opera crowd in his mask and fancy clothes. A haunting tale of obsession, a touching story about internal beauty, and a top-notch detective drama, The Phantom of the Opera is a remarkable novel, narrated to perfection by Henry Butler.

England, 1917. Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at her imposing country mansion, Greyswick - but she arrives to discover a house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion. Before long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella - sobbing in the night, little footsteps on the stairs - and as events escalate, she finds herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.

As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel. A young nurse fresh out of school, Kerstin has been hired for a position with the Cosway family, residents of the Hall for generations. She is soon introduced to her "charge", John Cosway, a 39-year-old man whose strange behavior is vaguely explained by his mother and sisters as part of the madness that runs in the family.

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. In the aftermath of her death, that estate - along with a ten-figure fortune and the demands of being a McTavish - pass to her adopted son, Camden. But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money - and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Ten years later, a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him back into the family fold at Ashby House.

Listeners know that few authors are able to create an atmosphere of unease and terror as well as Oates, a fact confirmed by the four novellas presented here. All the novellas in this collection revolve around the theme of love gone wrong - horribly, shockingly wrong.