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Edgar Cushing is a young man who has lost much until a kind and grieving widower adopts him and raises him in a loving and happy home. A fire destroys lives and hopes for the future while Edgar is in school, however, forcing him to abandon his education and seek employment to help his badly injured father. A surprisingly generous job opening draws him to an isolated house and its strange and mercurial mistress, her fiercely devoted housekeeper, and an enigmatic young artist whose connection to Bridewater House goes back two generations. For all its dreamlike and excessive splendor, however, Bridewater House has a secret of its own -- a dark, tragic one echoed in soft and creeping footfalls, a small child's calls for its mother, and the lonely grasp of a cold, invisible hand in the dark.

Orphaned and sickly, young Joscelin Charpentier, along with older sister Eulalie, is taken in by a wealthy uncle. The children cope with Uncle Marcel's cold indifference as best as they can, but Eulalie enjoys all the attention as the healthier child while Joscelin is subjected to the cruelty of a resentful nurse. Comfort and affection come his way in the person of Aunt Rosanna, a rapidly fading gentlewoman from Italy who develops and nurtures a unique bond with the lonely child. It's a bond that will be tested in the future following a night of murder and suicide, and on his return home after years of isolated study, Joscelin discovers just how deeply that connection runs as the château's long-held secrets fight to untangle themselves. Eerie muffled calls from somewhere in the château disturb the residents some nights, and Joscelin's homecoming intensifies the hauntings as the dead sense and acknowledge his presence. The mystery surrounding Aunt Rosanna's disappearance leads him to a broken iron piece with a rusted lily on one end. With only dark memories to guide him, Joscelin struggles to overcome deeply held fears in his bid to pay back a debt and bring his lost aunt home.

Coming out to his parents may have burdened him with unfortunate difficulties, but nineteen-year-old Adam Sheridan didn't expect a sudden flood of nightmares and fragmented dreams to ruin his nights and threaten his mental health. But there's a reason for these dreams, these baffling images of people and moments from a time and place that have never once crossed Adam's mind. As these grow more and more insistent, triggered by harmless little things in his day-to-day movements such as a co-worker's whistling, a framed print of an old painting, and even a quick escape in an old church, Adam realizes these are really memories surfacing. Memories from someone who lived three hundred years ago, in fact. A young man such as himself who once harbored hopes and dreams-all of which were lovingly recorded in a journal-who fell in love with another, and whose life was cut tragically short. But for what reason? And how? As Adam navigates through the murky and risky waters of living in a household bent on stifling his nature, his dreams call him back to the old church again and again. It's there, in a small and silent side chapel dedicated to the Virgin, where the answers lie. Answers guarded closely by the mournful specter of a man who has known Adam through the centuries.

A dark and deadly curse haunts a dying family, manifesting itself with neither rhyme nor reason in its frequency except for its victim: a male child who will then be born without a soul. Living in a great house designed specifically for entrapment, monsters and the women who become reluctant champions for their children carry on a tragic cycle shaped by an inexplicable mystery.And every final confrontation between the tainted and the protector is recorded in an old journal-a bloodstained volume handed down from champion to champion who must then learn how to rid her life of the monster she loves.Helena Ash is terminally ill, and she is forced to take on the mantle of guardian for her grandson's sake. Crispin is only seventeen, and he is blind and has lived a secluded and sheltered life. Keeping him safe while confronting otherworldly forces intent upon destroying their bloodline means Helena will have to resort to every trick in the book to ensure her grandson's survival.Now that includes, perhaps, the recruiting of a young gentleman who stumbles across the great house during a storm. Tadzio Michalak, a cynical Polish student traveling with his tutor, suddenly finds himself caught in a grotesque web that sounds like something his misguided and occult-loving father would prefer him to experience. And the longer he shelters against the storm's fury outside, the more he realizes there is simply no going back-no, not when Crispin lays unexpected claim on his heart.