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| Blood Ritual | ||
Published by Hodder Headline in 1994 eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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The girl in the portrait was young and slender, with white skin and burnt-pitch eyes. Catherine spent hours standing beneath the portrait, trying to decide if there was cruelty or passion in the face. The portrait was anonymous, but the lady had a name: she had been called Elizabeth Bathory. The Blood Countess. During her life in the 16th century, Elizabeth Bathory terrorised the countryside surrounding her bleak, remote castles, and worshipped strange and dark gods. But today, her descendants still live on, and are determined Elizabeth’s line shall not die. Only Catherine, fearing and detesting her heredity, has tried to escape that dreadful legacy. Eventually, she enters a convent, hoping to find the peace she has long desired. Michael Devlin, a freelance journalist, was blinded while making a documentary about the far-reaching effects of the Bosnian-Serb war, investigating how far the refugees fled. The last thing he saw before losing his sight was an underground room in a ruined castle, presided over by strange, hungrily beautiful, people. This eerie vision continues to haunt him, and in company with a young nun, Sister Hilary, he returns to the ancient castle in the Carpathian Mountains, to find the truth. This novel weaves the true story of the infamous Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Bathory, who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her beauty, with that of her modern-day descendants. |
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| The Devil's Piper | ||
Published by Hodder Headline in 1995
eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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Isarel West has just inherited an old Irish house once owned by his Jewish grandfather, Jude Weissman, the notorious and scandalous composer-conductor, nicknamed ‘Judas’ because of his allegiance to the Third Reich in WWII. Shortly after Isarel’s arrival, he finds some old sheet music and realises that it’s Jude’s famous Devil’s Piper Suite, which some people believed Jude had based on the Black Chant – a sequence of music that legend says can call an ancient power from the grave. And when Isarel starts to play it, a creature entombed in the crypt of a nearby monastery, escapes… Isarel, in company with Brother Ciaran whose Order has guarded the entombed creature for centuries,sets out to trace the dark legend to its source. As they do so, the truth about the ancient music begins to unfold. For the Black Chant’s legend is true. Its spell pulled a rebellious High Priest from the ancient past and began a chain of violent events. In twelfth century Italy, it brought tragedy to the family of a Cremona violin-maker… Three hundred years later, it charmed a Tudor King with shocking consequences… As recently as the twentieth century it trickled a dark and dreadful power through 1940s Berlin… And now, in the present, the Black Chant has fallen into the hands of a group of people who will once again make evil use of it. | |
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| The Burning Altar | ||
Published by Hodder Headline in 1996 
eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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Ancient demonic laws, macabre rituals, and a secret the Vatican has striven to hide for nearly two thousand years… Sir Lewis Chance is seen by the public as an eccentric philanthropist, the source of snippets for gossip-columnists who are always ready to pounce on a family seldom out of the public eye for long. For Lewis’s ancestor was the notorious Victorian rake, Patrick Chance, whose memoirs of his travels in Tibet created a sensation in the 19th century. Yet Lewis is the only one who knows that Patrick stumbled on the strange secret League of Tamerlaine – a remote Tibetan people who guard the sinister time-drenched Stone Tablets of their people. |
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| Thorn | ||
Published by Hodder Headline in 1996 eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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A dark re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty legend For several generations the Ingram family has lived under the curse of an hereditary madness. Imogen Ingram’s parents believe she is its next victim, and when a grisly incident occurs at the funeral of Imogen’s cousin, Edmund, it’s decided she must be shut away from the world. Dan Tudor, the writer commissioned to produce a feature about the family and its lucrative business concerns, finds himself drawn into a strange, tangled web surrounding the beautiful Imogen – a web spun by Thalia, Edmund’s manipulative mother, who is laying dark and terrible plans. When Imogen is finally cast into the mysterious stupor from which it’s feared she will never wake and transferred to a bleak mental institution, Thalia follows, and lures Dan to come with her. It’s then that Dan uncovers the truth about the Ingram family – but it is more macabre and horrifying than anyone could ever have imagined |
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| Changeling | ||
Published by Hodder Headline in 1996
eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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A dark re-telling of the ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ legend. Fael Miller’s father, Tod, is an egocentric has-been – a song-writer who still feeds on the glory of his one success. Many years on, he’s found a backer for a new musical, but, faced with reality, discovers in panic that he can no longer write. He turns to his daughter for help, but although Fael can think of several storylines, she is unable to construct a full stage musical. Then one evening, she’s accosted by a mysterious young man wearing a black cloak and mask. He claims he can help her. And so begins Fael’s secret alliance with the man she calls Scathach – the Gael word for “shadow”. Scathach proposes a pact – he’ll write the music but she’ll incur a debt which one day she must honour. Between them they weave a glittering, eerily beautiful story which goes into rehearsal. But while Fael falls deeper under Scathach’s spell, he is secretly planning a dark vengeance – a vengeance that takes Fael to the remote and menace-filled house on Ireland’s west coast, where the debt must finally be paid. |
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| Wildwood | ||
 Published by Hodder Headline in 1996 eBook format, published by Severn House Select [Digital Books], 2012
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A modern re-telling of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ Sinister memories of Piers Adair’s childhood haunt him, eventually compelling him to search for a strange inhuman group of people whose macabre history is bound up with a centuries-old legend. He traces them to a remote Scottish island, but it’s only when the darkly charismatic leader leaves the island that Piers begins to realise he is being lured increasingly closer to the legend’s grisly heart. In London, Felicity Stafford is struggling to come to terms with the death of her husband, Connor – coping with his debts, and also with a chilling autopsy report which states that Connor’s blood fits no known human classification. And when a young man with the same dangerous charm as Con enters her life, Felicity and her small daughter, Bryony, become threatened by a past that is entangled with an ancestral Derbyshire family. A family who once guarded England’s forests from a fearsome enemy… A lonely woodland cottage serves as temporary sanctuary for Felicity and Bryony, but as the old legend wakes, the wolves are once again seen in the ancient wildwood… |