In this darkly delicious sliver of a tale, Philip Pullman offers a glimpse of the enigmatic girl who will become the sinister Mrs. Coulter. On a cold winter's night, in a college in Oxford, two art collectors are settled before a fire, discussing the unusual pieces of art one has recently acquired. These pieces--a portrait of a striking young woman and a bronze sculpture of a fearsome monkey--are connected in mysterious, even improbable, ways. But...

"From the acclaimed author of Spoonbenders comes the gripping tale about a family's mysterious religion, and the daughter who turned her back on their god. In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left by her father in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. The remote hills of the Smoky Mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and upon her arrival, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the presence of the family's...

"Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the Arctic, but she doesn't know why or how... The 1850s are a time of discovery, and London is ablaze with the latest scientific theories and debates, especially when a spectacular new exhibition of dinosaur sculptures opens at the Crystal Palace. Mary is keen to make her name in this world of science alongside her geologist husband,...

"Princess Imogen of Goslind has lived a sheltered life for three years at the boarded-up castle--she and the rest of its inhabitants safe from the bloody mori roja plague that's ravaged the kingdom. But Princess Imogen has a secret, and as King Stuart descends further into madness, it's at great risk of being revealed. Rations dwindle each day, and unhappy murmurings threaten to crack the facade of the years-long charade being played within the castle...

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here ... A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen...

A young bride is brought by her new husband to his manor house in England. There she finds that the memory of her husband's first wife haunts her, and she tries to discover the secret of that mysterious woman's death.

"An atmospheric gothic mystery that beautifully brings the ancient Cornish countryside to life, Armstrong introduces heroine Ruby Vaughn in her Minotaur Books & Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award-winning debut, The Curse of Penryth Hall. After the Great War, American heiress Ruby Vaughn made a life for herself running a rare bookstore alongside her octogenarian employer and house mate in Exeter. She's always avoided dwelling on the...

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful...

Librarian Alec Charlesworth has lost his job, his beloved wife has just died, and his sister has disappeared. Alec searches for clues about her disappearance in a file of interviews between a man called "Wiggy" and a cat, Roger. Who speaks to him. Roger's older than Methuselah, and his unblinking stare comes from the fact that he's seen it all-- and he's got a tale to tell, a tale of shocking local history and dark forces that may link not only the...

"The devil's daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin, to work as a maid for the minister of Culture, a man who lives a dual life. But the real reason she's there is to bear him and his barren wife a child, the consequences of which curse the tenement building that is their home for a hundred years. As we travel through the nine floors of the building and the next eight decades, the resident's lives entwine over the ages in unpredictable ways. Along...