A stylish and seductive Victorian gothic vampire novel of romance and horror.“You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one forever.”
It’s 1872. Laura Westenra and her father live in a castle in the Austrian countryside; a peaceful, uneventful existence that leaves young Laura anxious for a bit of excitement. Their lives are turned upside down when an out of control carriage careens out of the night and crashes before their very doorstep. Dark and spooky strangers emerge from the wreckage, leaving a beautiful, angelic girl in the Westenra’s care before vanishing once again into the night.
As this mysterious stranger is welcomed into their home, Laura suddenly finds her life a whirlwind of uncertain new feelings as her friendship for their new guest grows, and as she faces falling in love for the first time. Meanwhile, an unknown plague sweeps through the local village and when Laura becomes sick, her devoted father fears the worst – that she too is a victim of the baffling disease.
Little do they know that the plague and Laura’s new best friend are intimately connected. And that demons from the past are not so dead as they appear.
What shocking horrors are divulged as they unearth the truths about the deserted ruined village in the woods, the history of the once-noble, now extinct Karnstein family, and the people they thought they knew? Can Laura survive the worrying, seductive illness slowly pulling her into darkness? Will anyone live on once they discover the true evil behind all the death around them, and the epic confrontation it leads them to?
She looked into my eyes. “Are you afraid, dearest?”
I shook my head. “No. But I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.”
“You are afraid to die?”
“Yes, everyone is.”
She sighed and spoke dreamily. “But to die as lovers may, to die together, so that they may be together forever.”
With appearances by Count Dracula and Abhraham Van Helsing!
Fans of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and traditional gothic vampire literature will be thrilled at seeing their favourite characters appear here. Fans of Charlaine Harris’s True Blood series, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Anne Rice’s vampire chronicles will love experiencing the roots of the modern vampiric tradition.
