The Darkling Bride

February 19, 2018
Atmosphere doesn’t come any more dark and dank than in this gothic novel from Andersen (The Boleyn King) that takes place in a Scottish castle riddled with secrets and haunted by ghosts. Hired to catalog the library at Deeprath Castle, Carragh Ryan, a Chinese-American academic, early on proclaims, “I’m here for the library. Not for men, and not for ghosts.” But her work will involve her with both, the former in the person of the handsome, brooding Viscount Aidan Gallagher, a London art cop who inherited his title and the castle 23 years ago after the mysterious deaths of his parents. The ghosts arrive via a haunted local folktale, that of the Darkling Bride. In a parallel narrative set in 1879, English novelist Evan Chase comes to Deeprath Castle pursuing the legend and falls in love with its young mistress, Jenny Gallagher, who meets an untimely death. In the present, Carragh and Aidan team up to get to the bottom of all three deaths and their ties to the legend of the Darkling Bride. Andersen (The Boleyn King) has plenty of surprises up her sleeve to keep the reader entertained on the way to a suspenseful ending, including hypnosis, a changeling, and—of course—ghosts.

May 28, 2018
Reader Drummey’s brogue adds a layer of authenticity and atmosphere to Andersen’s unique mixture of contemporary mystery, romance, and gothic chiller set in a haunted Irish castle. In 2015, young Carragh Ryan, a novice archivist, is hired by 80-year-old Nessa Gallagher to inventory the historic library at the family’s Deeprath Castle, where, according to local legend, the ghost of the wrathful Darkling Bride is still in residence. The castle is soon to be donated to the Irish National Trust, a decision made by Nessa’s great nephew, Aidan Gallagher, a handsome Scotland Yard detective who inherited the estate after the still-unsolved murders of his parents at the castle two decades before. The novel flashes back to that period and to 1879, when Jenny Gallagher, the disturbed wife of novelist Evan Chase, killed herself. Drummey performs impressively as the despondent Jenny and the distraught Evan, and, when the Gallaghers gather at Deeprath, she gracefully shifts from imperious Nessa to distracted, aloof Aidan, to his brittle, cynical older sister Kyla and her smarmy, adulterous husband Philip. Drummey’s narration adds an Irish lilt to the love story, suspense to the whodunit, and an air of gloom and doom to the gothic flashbacks, resulting in a tale listeners will find as seductive as it is thrilling. A Ballantine hardcover.