Deliciously eerie. --Leslie Rule, Bestselling Author

From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind from the brilliant guides behind Boroughs of the Dead, featured on NPR.org, The New York Times, and Jezebel, explores the history behind America's female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us--and why they haunt us . . .

Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction

Sorrowful widows, vengeful jezebels, innocent maidens, wronged lovers, former slaves, even the occasional axe-murderess--America's female ghosts differ widely in background, class, and circumstance. Yet one thing unites them: their ability to instill fascination and fear, long after their deaths. Here are the full stories behind some of the best-known among them, as well as the lesser-known--though no less powerful.

Tales whispered in darkness often divulge more about the teller than the subject. America's most famous female ghosts, from from 'Mrs. Spencer' who haunted Joan Rivers' New York apartment to Bridget Bishop, the first person executed during the Salem witchcraft trials, mirror each era's fears and prejudices. Yet through urban legends and campfire stories, even ghosts like the nameless hard-working women lost in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire --achieve a measure of power and agency in death, in ways unavailable to them as living women.

Riveting for skeptics and believers alike, with humor, curiosity, and expertise, A Haunted History of Invisible Women offers a unique lens on the significant role these ghostly legends play both within the spook-seeking corners of our minds and in the consciousness of a nation.

A Haunted History of Invisible Women looks beyond the legends of maligned female ghosts and gives us their real histories. It is both a meditation on the misogyny of a ghost-hunting culture that capitalizes on false narratives of sex and death, and a fascinating look at the flesh-and-blood women behind the ghost stories. This book is a long-overdue search for historic truth, yet it recognizes that When it comes to ghosts, truth is as elusive as the spirits themselves. --Chris Woodyard, Author of The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Afterword by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Linda D. Addison

As the twentieth century dawns in NYC, the top-secret Ghost Precinct pursues justice beyond the earthly realm in this paranormal historical mystery series.

The ethereal denizens of New York owe a great debt to Eve Whitby, the young medium who leads an all-female team of spiritualists in the police department's Ghost Precinct. Without her efforts on behalf of the incorporeal, many souls would have been lost or damned by means both human and inhuman.

But now Eve faces an enemy determined to exorcise the city's ghostly population once and for all. Albert Prenze is supposed to be dead. Instead he is very much alive, having assumed the identity of his twin brother Alfred, and taken control of the family's dubiously acquired fortune. To achieve his vicious ends, Albert plots to twist Eve's abilities into his own psychic weapon--a weapon that not only poses a threat to spirits but to everyone she cares for, including her beloved Detective Horowitz . . .

Smart, boundlessly creative gaslamp fantasy. --RT Book Reviews on Eterna and Omega

Will have readers chomping at the bit for more. --Suspense Magazine on Eterna and Omega

From the Bram Stoker nominated author team who penned A Haunted History of Invisible Women, the first book of its kind to investigate gothic tropes that define American lore. Here is the hidden, dark history of what frightens us - and why.

The Gothic. Brooding, atmospheric, chilling, and not always the outpouring of a feverish imagination. Reality can be even stranger as borne out in this lush and ghostly look at real people who lived--and died--amidst the trappings of the Gothic.

Fog clinging to an isolated mansion. A dangerous patriarch or an overbearing matron. Locked doors and forbidden rooms. Whispers of murder and madness. And a woman shadowed by omnipresent threats. You've guessed it. You've stumbled into a Gothic tale, and it will haunt you like a ghost.

We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film--breath-catching escapes that tap into our fears, anxieties, forbidden desires, and unsettling dreams. But what if some of these chilly vibes are rooted in the experiences of real and tragic people who danced a macabre waltz with love and death? That's why we're here. Take the case of teenage Mercy Brown, victim--or was it predator?--of Rhode Island's vampire hysteria of the 1890s. Marguerite de la Roque, a French noblewoman condemned for sexual crimes to Canada's long-lost Isle of Demons. What happened to her and the barren landscape itself is the stuff of legend. And Mad Lucy Ludwell, the decidedly peculiar eighteenth-century high-society hauteur driven mad in the Virginia estate she prowls to this day. President Helen Peabody's spirit still stringently watches over her Women's College, now part of Ohio's Miami University. Ghosts of workers lost in horrific conditions while building the Hoosac Tunnel warn of imminent danger. Settle in. There are more.

Welcome to the phantom ships, haunted academic halls, menacing landscapes, and family curses of America's Most Gothic--a tour of true spectral sightings and disordered minds. But beware: it's sure to get under your skin. The haunted--and haunting--figures herein want it that way.

Solving crime isn't only for the living.

In turn-of-the century New York City, the police have an off-the-books spiritual go-to when it comes to solving puzzling corporeal crimes. . .

Her name is Eve Whitby, gifted medium and spearhead of The Ghost Precinct. When most women are traveling in a gilded society that promises only well-appointed marriage, the confident nineteen-year-old Eve navigates a social circle that carries a different kind of chill. Working with the diligent but skeptical Lieutenant Horowitz, as well as a group of fellow psychics and wayward ghosts, Eve holds her own against detractors and threats to solve New York's most disturbing crimes as only a medium of her ability can.

But as accustomed as Eve is to ghastly crimes and all matters of the uncanny, even she is unsettled by her department's latest mystery. Her ghostly conduits are starting to disappear one by one as though snatched away by some evil force determined to upset the balance between two realms, and most important-destroy the Ghost Precinct forever. Now Eve must brave the darkness to find the vanished souls. She has no choice. It's her job to make sure no one is ever left for dead.

There is something truly magical about Leanna Renee Hieber's writing. -Shana DuBois Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi/Fantasy Blog on Perilous Prophecy

Smart, boundlessly creative gaslamp fantasy. -RT Book Reviews on Eterna and Omega

Will have readers chomping at the bit for more. -Suspense Magazine on Eterna and Omega

London, 1888. An ancient Prophecy has just been fulfilled, leaving Rebecca Thompson, Headmistress of the mysterious Athens Academy utterly heartbroken. Having long served as second in command of The Guard, keeping balance between the mortal and spirit world, she has lived a lonely life in love with the leader of the Guard. But now that he is married to another woman, Rebecca fears her bleak, isolated future. The Heart of The Guard, Vicar Michael Carroll has valiantly mitigated the emotional toils ghostly work takes on his fellows, working magic with his unique brand of empathy and contagious joy. But secretly he has always harbored a passionate love for the Headmistress, who has never noticed him as anything other than a friend. As he gathers his courage to tell her the truth, he finds the whole of the spirit world is there to help him. Three ghosts set the Headmistress and the Vicar on a dizzying course of change. Wrenching journeys through the past, present and future collide with unexpected dangers from the spirit world. True love, teamwork, scheming ghosts and guardian angels conspire to save the hearts, minds and souls of two deserving mortals at the mercy of immortal powers...just in time for the holidays.

New York, 1899, and the police department's best ally is the secret Ghost Precinct, where spirits and psychics help solve the city's most perplexing crimes . . .

There's more than one way to catch a killer-though the methods employed by the NYPD's Ghost Precinct, an all-female team of psychics and spiritualists led by gifted young medium Eve Whitby, are unconventional to say the least. Eve is concerned by the backlash that threatens the department-and by the discovery of an otherworldly realm, the Ghost Sanctuary, where the dead can provide answers. But is there a price to be paid for Eve and her colleagues venturing beyond the land of the living?

Searching for clues about a mortician's disappearance, Eve encounters a charismatic magician and mesmerist whose abilities are unlike any she's seen. Is he a link to mysterious deaths around the city, or to the Ghost Sanctuary? Torn between the bonds of her team and her growing relationship with the dashing Detective Horowitz, Eve must discern truth from illusion and friend from foe, before another soul vanishes into the ether . . .

There is something truly magical about Leanna Renee Hieber's writing. -Shana DuBois Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi/Fantasy Blog on Perilous Prophecy

Smart, boundlessly creative gaslamp fantasy. -RT Book Reviews on Eterna and Omega

Will have readers chomping at the bit for more. -Suspense Magazine on Eterna and Omega

Paying homage to the over-the-top, spine-tingling gothic novels of the 1970s, Hieber (Strangely Beautiful) treats readers to a deceptively light contemporary love story shrouded in an atmosphere of the fantastic.... filled with all the high drama and family feuds fans of the genre expect... infused with just enough lightness and humor to make the quirky premise work. -- Publishers Weekly

If you love all things both goth and Gothic and want to see the mid-century-style Gothic romances brought into the modern day, you absolutely do not want to miss this. - The Gothic Library

FIVE STARS. I want to move to Glazier's Gap. -- Torie L, Netgalley Reviewer

This book was right up my alley, Ghosts, creepy mansions, books and writing...sign me up!!!! -- Beth J, Netgalley Reviewer

Great gothic fun. Long lost ghostly romance in a spooky town with a tongue-in-cheek wink at the pulpy gothic novels of the 1960-70s. -- Madeleine D, Netgalley Reviewer

The only way I can describe it was rapturous. -- Lauren M, Netgalley Reviewer

She should run. But can she?

When newly unemployed writer Lillian Anders tries to escape her personal demons by running off to Glazier's Gap for a writer's conference hosted by a reviving Gothic romance publisher, she lands right in the middle of her own Gothic novel. Her life begins eerily reflecting one of the early-'70s women running from houses books in the publisher's archive. Striking 19th Century ghosts haunt darkened halls and carriage-house mirrors, startling Lillian with dangerous secrets. As a hungry, violent force lurks in the mountains and the abandoned silver mine, Lillian's presence rekindles old flames and reopens aching wounds. When charming journalist Nathaniel Lynd arrives in town, he and Lillian forge an immediate bond when intimate memories surface from another century. Evil forces that killed star-crossed lovers in the past seek to destroy Lillian and Nathaniel in the present. It will take fortitude, ingenuity and unexpected help from the strange town itself to make sure the demons of the past don't destroy a passionate future; destined to set old wrongs right.

ABOUT GLAZIER'S GAP

Welcome to Glazier's Gap, Colorado-- a small, gossip-filled hamlet started by the mysterious owners of a now-abandoned silver mine whose unwitting rivalries set the town on a cursed trajectory. From an enormous luxury resort hotel destroyed years ago in a landslide- whose wreckage remains half-buried today- to unexplained fires in grand mansions, the town isn't known for good luck. It's a place with a bright side, though: tourists visit its rickety old ski resort, hike shadowed mountain paths and locals attend its small college. There's even a defunct book publisher starting up again. But underneath it all: Glazier's Gap is full of secrets and ghosts.

Every book follows a different person in Glazier's Gap who falls into a supernatural love affair-- like Broadchurch with phantoms, a romantic Twilight Zone in a beautiful, creepy town.

Featuring stories of pulse-pounding, blood-curdling revenge from Leanna Renee Hieber, Claire Low, Dotti Enderle, Jeremiah Dylan Cook, Will McDermott, Sara Martinez, Scott Pearson, Rob Nisbet, Serena Jayne, Katya de Becerra, Carmen Gray, Michael Joseph Tharnish Roby, Charles R. Rutledge, Melanie Schubert, Heath W. Shelby, Bryan Young, Alethea Kontis and Liz Holliday.

I'm coming for you.

The whispers haunt her dreams and fill her waking hours with dread. Something odd is happening. Something...unnatural.

Possession of the living. Resurrection of the dead. And Natalie Stewart is caught right in the middle. Jonathon, the one person she thought she could trust, has become a double agent for the dark side. But he plays the part so well, Natalie has to wonder just how much he's really acting.

She can't even see what it is she's fighting. But the cost of losing her heart, her sanity...her soul.

Magic Most Foul Series:

Darker Still (Book 1)

The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (Book 2)

Praise for Darker Still, an Indie Next Selection:

Original, haunting, and romantic. --YA Bound

This chilling tale will draw you in and keep you guessing until the very last page. --Seventeen.com

A lush gothic tale that begs for reading...I couldn't put it down. --New York Times bestselling author Sarah Maclean

I was obssessed.

It was as if he called to me, demanding I reach out and touch the brushstrokes of color swirled onto the canvas. It was the most exquisite portrait I'd ever seen--everything about Lord Denbury was unbelievable...utterly breathtaking and eerily lifelike.

There was a reason for that. Because despite what everyone said, Denbury never had committed suicide. He was alive. Trapped within his golden frame.

I've crossed over into his world within the painting, and I've seen what dreams haunt him. They haunt me too. He and I are inextricably linked--bound together to watch the darkness seeping through the gas-lit cobblestone strets of Manhattan. And unless I can free him soon, things will only get Darker Still.

Magic Most Foul Series:

Darker Still (Book 1)

The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (Book 2)

Just when we think our nightmares are over, the Society has invented a new horror. Around every corner a shadow, behind every whisper a demon. If we don't end what the devils began, we will die haunted...The finale in the acclaimed Magic Most Foul trilogy: The trauma and the terror of the Master's Society has only escalated for the dashing Lord Denbury and brave, feisty Miss Natalie Stewart, and a new terror has been unleashed in Manhattan. Together with their stalwart friends and unlikely heroes, they take the fight directly to the Denbury estate, where new evils have awakened. But are they prepared for all the sacrifices that shall be asked of them? With their very lives and the sanctity of their mortal souls at stake, Natalie and Jonathon are past the point of no return...

Originally published as two books, Strangely Beautiful unites Leanna Renee Hieber's critically acclaimed novels in a single revised volume, restoring the author's original vision for the work.

Miss Persephone Parker--known as Percy--is different, with her lustrous, snow-white hair, pearlescent pale skin, and uncanny ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Seeking to continue her education, Percy has come to Queen Victoria's London, to the Athens Academy. What she will learn there will change her life forever.

Athens Academy is the citadel of The Guard, an ancient order that battles the forces of evil. The Victorian Guard, led by professor Alexi Rychman, is incomplete. They cannot defeat Jack the Ripper-- who is more than the serial killer he appears to be--or the greater monster his appearance heralds.

Percy's lifelong habit of concealment combined with Alexi's fevered search for the Guard's missing seventh nearly prove disastrous as ancient Greek myths begin playing out in modern, gaslit, Victorian London. Percy and her new friends and allies must overcome their preconceptions about each other and their own histories before they can set the world to rights.

Strangely Beautiful series
Strangely Beautiful
Perilous Prophecy
Miss Violet and the Great War

The Eterna Files series
The Eterna Files
Eterna and Omega
The Eterna Solution

Compiled into a single volume for the first time, discover Leanna Renee Hieber's award-winning Dark Nest saga of futuristic, paranormal novellas. Known more widely for her acclaimed and award-winning Gothic Victorian Fantasy novels such as the Strangely Beautiful, Magic Most Foul and Eterna Files series, Dark Nest was her very first foray into published fiction via a small boutique press. Dark Nest was awarded the 2009 Prism Award for excellence in Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Romance (First place, Novella Category) In the Dark Nest Chronicles, newly evolved psychically gifted humans have been sent by the Homeworld on a space mission aboard two distinct Nests. Relationships between the Light Nest and the Dark Nest have faltered and three distinct sets of commanding officers are sure there's something insidious behind it. In a matter of hours, in three high-stakes tales told from different perspectives aboard ships and under Homeworld siege, these sets of lovers will be torn apart and reunited, secret survival plans will go into dizzying effect, assassinations and revenges will be attempted and carried out, and death-defying sacrifices must be made. Each of these visionary leaders must do their part to quickly unite their people and discover vast new powers the Homeworld denied them, or else submit to genocide. Here's a fresh new voice on the scene. This romance fantasy novella hits all the right notes. Leanna has created a world that is so descriptive it will dance before your eyes. Set in the future, newly evolved psychically gifted humans are sent by the Homeworld to charter new territory. But as they discover betrayal, they also realize their true potential. I say pick this one up. - Maria of RomanceNovel.tv on Dark NestThe best thing about sci-fi is the exploration of all the different worlds invented by imaginative writers. Leanna Renee Hieber is imaginative. Even though the book is only novella length, the society she created was interesting, the plot feasible, and the imagery clear. I hope she works more with this story, because I want to see what happens when the tables turn. - Joysann for Publisher's Weekly's Beyond Her Book on Dark Nest

Winner of the Prism Award for Best Fantasy Novel

Tells a love story with exquisite detail.--TrueBlood.net

Cairo in the 1860s is a bustling metropolis where people from all walks of life mix and mingle, mostly in complex harmony. When evil ghosts and unquiet spirits stalk the city's streets, the Guard are summoned--six young men and women of different cultures, backgrounds, and faiths, gifted by their Goddess with great powers.

While others of the Guard embrace their duties, their leader, British-born Beatrice, is gripped by doubt. What right has she, a bookish, sheltered, eighteen-year-old, to lead others into battle? Why isn't dark-eyed, compelling Ibrahim, who is stronger of will than Beatrice, the one in charge?

Ghosts maraud through Cairo's streets, heralding a terrible darkness. Beatrice and her Guard have little time to master their powers; a great battle looms as an ancient prophecy roars toward its final, deadly conclusion.

This enchanting prequel to Leanna Renee Hieber's gaslamp fantasy, Strangely Beautiful, returns to print after more than a decade, edited and revised for Tor's publication.

Strangely Beautiful series
Strangely Beautiful
Perilous Prophecy
Miss Violet and the Great War

The Eterna Files series
The Eterna Files
Eterna and Omega
The Eterna Solution

PRISM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

A superb, standalone adventure in Leanna Renee Hieber's groundbreaking, critically acclaimed Strangely Beautiful series, full of passion and power.

From childhood, Violet Rychman has dreamed of a coming war, of death and battle on an unimaginable scale. She has seen and heard ghosts, who have loved and guided her.

Now the future she dreamed has come to pass. World War I rages across Europe. Millions of people are dying; entire villages are disappearing.

A great and terrible vision sweeps over Violet, offering powers heralded by the Muses of antiquity. The ability to impact people's memories, even shape their thoughts. To guide their souls. To pass between the world of the living and that of the dead and to bring others through that passage.

These and other gifts once belonged to people Violet loved. Now they are hers, and she must use them to attempt to stop death itself.

Strangely Beautiful series
Strangely Beautiful
Perilous Prophecy
Miss Violet and the Great War

The Eterna Files series
The Eterna Files
Eterna and Omega
The Eterna Solution