Bleak November

Book excerpt: When Amy Burton's mother-in-law buys her and her husband Eric a lovely old mansion, it sounds like a dream come true for the young couple. But there's something not quite right about the house. Old Mrs. Mac, who has psychic gifts, is the first to notice a sinister aura, and then there are the weird cries in the night and the scratching of a ghostly black dog at the door. Even stranger is the fact that the old house is not really old, but for some mysterious reason has been made to look that way. At last Amy learns the unspeakable truth about a horrible deed committed in the house. But Amy has secrets of her own, buried deep within her memory and struggling to break free to the surface. The terror at the Burton house mounts, but is it really haunted, or is it all just in Amy's mind? Readers will find the book impossible to put down until its final shocking revelation. Inspired in part by a real-life case, Rohan O'Grady's Bleak November (1970) is an exceptional Gothic novel with a genuinely creepy atmosphere, a slow-building sense of dread, and enough twists and turns to keep readers guessing. "By the time I finished it very late at night, I hesitated to look up from its pages." - The New York Times "An unforgettable heroine - a marvelous Gothic!" - St. Louis Post-Dispatch