Terror at Seacliff Pines by Florence Hurd (Manor Books, 1976)

A large scary house in the background?  A pretty young woman in the foreground?  This has got to be a Modern Gothic novel.

HOUSE OF TERROR

When young Jennifer inherited an old and sprawling mansion on the rocky California coast, a whole new world opened up to her.  She planned to sell the house, to travel, to do what she had always dreamed of.

But when she arrived at Seacliff Pines, her dreams became visions of hell.  For the house was tainted with the touch of death and alive with the whispers of madness...

It's a slightly unusual cover, because Our Heroine isn't running away from her "HOUSE OF TERROR" so much as standing around contemplating running away from it.  Or maybe walking away from it very, very slowly...

(I won't go into to the plot.  Suffice it to say it is resolved with very bizarre twist!)

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart (Hodder, 1964)

Found in a Salvos Store this weekend:

 

Now this is awkward!  The blurbs on the back of this book tell us what the Daily Express said about this book, and gives us a paragraph in praise of the author, but it has nothing at all actually about the book:

The Ivy Tree

"has the ideal thriller blend of plot, suspense, character drawing and good writing... it opens with the impact of a rifle report on a calm summer's day and drives to its climax of action with compelling urgency."

 Daily Express

Mary Stewart, 

author of 'The Moonspinners', has found success with every word.  Her books have been translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish and enjoy enormous success in America where they appear regularly on the bestseller lists.

This kind of thing is not uncommon with Hodder paperbacks!


(From memory, The Ivy Tree contains a heroine (in peril), a case of mistaken identity, an isolated house and a family with a secret.   In other words, fairly standard ingredients, but mixed by a master of the genre!)

At Some Forgotten Door by Doris Miles Disney (MacFadden-Bartell, 1967)

Bought at the closing down sale of one of my favourite bookshops:

 

STARK TERROR NAILED HER TO THE SPOT

They stood facing each other, her enormous eyes reflecting the fear for her life--the greatest fear she had ever known.

Neither of them moved or spoke, testing the unique bond between them, the bond of murderer and intended victim.

He broke the deadly silence. "If you'd listened to reason..."

She saw his hands clench and unclench.  She could almost feel them at her throat.  She saw him stiffen with the resolve to get it over with.

Hetty hurled the lamp into his face.

... And I don't blame the heroine for being scared of the house - look, there's a giant head growing out of it!

Seriously.  This was sold as crime fiction, but it's much closer to being a gothic romance.  There's a sinister house - check - an orphaned heroine - check - and vague intimations of something being wrong before anything actually happens.  There's a charming young man whom the heroine insists on marrying even though everyone warns her against him.  And it's not until the very last chapter of the book that the heroine goes exploring and discovers a secret room filled with dead bodies.

Lastly, At Some Forgotten Door is set in the 1880s.  This came as quite a shock to me when I opened the book, because there is nothing on the cover to indicate that it is a historical novel!

The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1972)

 

Voyage into mystery...

When Anna Brett sets sail for a Pacific island, she is already in love with Redvers Stretton, captain of the Serene Lady.  Stretton has lost an earlier ship in mysterious circumstances, and with it some priceless diamonds.

On the primitive island of Coralle, with its beliefs in witchcraft and the powers of darkness, the truth about Captain Stretton comes to light.  And the haunting riddle of the Secret Woman is finally revealed...

Here we have a variation on the Women Running From Houses theme--Woman Standing in Front of a Palm Tree.

This book actually got me thinking: namely that Gothic Romances share a lot of the ingredients of crime fiction, but they're mixed in different proportions.  Here we have a story filled with crime--murders, attempted murder, sabotage (the hero's ship is blown up), theft (the priceless diamonds mentioned above), blackmail and identity theft (the plot's resolution turns on the swapping of two babies many years before).  Yet none of these seem really important--instead the story focuses on the emotions of our rather passive heroine.

Again, unlike in crime fiction, no one actively seeks to solve the crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice in this book .  The heroine, as I said, is rather passive and very naive.  She lets things happen to her rather than directing events.  The hero is absent through most of the book and if anything, is even less interested in investigating mysteries than the heroine.  There's an anti-heroine (in another kind of story she'd be a femme fatale!) who is responsible for the murders and attempted murders.  However her misdeeds take place offstage--and her downfall is recorded in a short chapter and is brought about by accident.  None of her co-conspirators are caught or face any kind of punishment for their crimes.

So I'm left imagining the story as written by a different author: a story where hard-boiled Captain Stretton searches for the men who blew up his ship and stole the diamonds, and tangles with the shady dame who tries to poison him....

Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1974)

Another paperback from the Green Shed.

 

Till Death us do Part...

Favel Farrington and her new husband were almost strangers.  In Capri the dashing young heir to Pendorric had swept the lovely English girl into marriage with the sudden fierceness of a summer storm.

Favel was dazed with happiness--until she discovered that someone was planning a very special place for her in the family--in the vault with the other legendary "Brides of Pendorric" who all dies so mysteriously, and so tragically...

"To Death us do Part" took on a new and ominous meaning.

 On the cover our heroine flees a burning building--but she doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry, given she took time to don the elaborate whatever-it-is she's wearing and do her makeup.   She has also taken the time to stop and pose dramatically, with one arm flung up to shield her forehead.  (There's something wrong with that arm, by the way, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is!)

The novel itself is much less interesting than its cover--nothing much happens to the heroine in the first two hundred or so pages of the book except suspicions, forebodings and the occasional Grim Warning.  As in most gothic romances, the actual star of the story is "Pendorric", the house in which it takes place.  Here's a question: why do the heroines of gothic romances never find themselves menaced in flats or suburban bungalows, and "swept" into marriage with dashing yet sinister actuaries or accountants?

Barnabas, Quentin and the Magic Potion by Marilyn Ross (Paperback Library, 1971)

I got this at the "going out of business" sale of one of my favourite bookshops:

 

Barnabas predicts trouble for Collinwood when Nicholas Freeze, in whose antique shop Carolyn Stoddard works, discovers a centuries-old potion that promises eternal youth.  Soon after, Mr. Freeze's daughter Hazel tricked into taking the serum, dies.  Carolyn is grief-stricken over her friend's death.  Barnabas insists she stay on at the shop to watch Nicholas Freeze and his associates, one of whom Carolyn suspects is Quentin Collins, back at Collinwood in a disguise.

Then Carolyn sees Hazel's ghost.

She interprets this as a warning that Mr. Freeze has marked her for his next victim.  Barnabas still refuses to let her quit.

Has Barnabas made a fatal mistake by deliberately endangering Carolyn's life?  Or will his plan avenge Hazel's murder and put her spirit to rest?

Even the most dedicated fans of Dark Shadows have trouble deciding exactly what is and isn't canon.  That's not so surprising: the writers of the show made it up as they went along, and if they thought of something exciting that contradicted a previously established fact then the previously established fact got tossed out the window.  After all, they were writing for an ephemeral daily soap and who'd notice the contradictions (or even care if they did?)

So it's also not surprising that when somebody decided to commission a series of tie-in novels, they didn't take particular care to see that they conformed to the show.  What they did instead was give a brief description of Dark Shadows to a writer of Gothic romances who had never actually watched the series.  The results are ... interesting, let us say.  The names of most of the characters are the same as in the TV show (though some major characters have gone missing in action) but somehow their personalities are subtly wrong.  Their backstories differ from the backstories of the characters in the TV series and their physical descriptions certainly don't match!

After reading a few of them, I've come to the conclusion that the Dark Shadows novels exist in a parallel universe to the Dark Shadows TV series.  And yes, parallel universes are one of the things that are definitely canon in the Dark Shadows universe (along with time travel!)

(The cover photograph on this book is a still of Jonathan Frid in his role of Barnabas Collins.   Apart from that it doesn't really have anything to do with the story inside the book.)

The Craghold Curse by Edwina Noone (Belmont Tower Books, 1972)

This book is a weird mashup--combining ghosts, gangsters, G-men and some kind of demonic desk clerk!  When I saw it in the Green Shed I just had to buy it:

 

A "holiday of horror" --well, we've all had those.  You flight is delayed.  The airline loses your luggage.  The air-conditioning in your hotel room fails, and it rains the whole time you're away...

Oh.  Not that kind of Horror Holiday?

HORROR HOTEL

Craghold House had much to offer as a resort.  It was a picturesque area surrounded by Craghold Lake, Goblin Wood, and the Caves of Hex.  It was an area rich in legends of doomed families, curses and ghosts.  Theresa Galliani and her father would take a vacation here like no other--a vacation at Craghold House.

How could anyone resist a resort like that?

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?