Saturday, January 2, 2016

Ravens' Blood by E.F. Benson (Popular Library, 1961)

Found on a charity bookstall at the markets:


THE CURSE OF THE PENTREATHS

Lovely young Nell Robson had heard fearful stories about the old mansion of the Pentreaths ever since she was a little girl in the isolated English village of St. Columb's.  Some said the very ground the house stood on was accursed.  Others whispered of horrifying rites performed in the meadowland under the moon.

Now Nell had come to live within the mansion's walls, and all rumors paled beside the truth.  The master of the house called himself a man of God, but minister of Satan would have been a better name.  The Pentreath women seemed puppets of the shameless sensuality and sinister evil that poisoned the air.  And even as Nell desperately sought to escape, she felt herself falling under the spell of handsome, powerful Dennis Pentreath, heir to the Pentreath curse, who spoke of love even as he drew Nell toward the abyss...
  Ravens' Blood is most definitely NOT a gothic romance, and anyone anticipating one will be disappointed upon opening the book.  What on Earth possessed Popular Books to market it this way?

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