Book excerpt: From the “Queen of the American gothics”: In turn-of-the-century New York, a strange inheritance lures a vulnerable governess into a trap (The New York Times). Camilla King knows little of her family history, having never met her estranged relatives. Her late father wanted it that way. But when she receives a startling invitation from her immeasurably wealthy and ailing grandfather, Orrin Judd, to return to Thunder Heights, the crumbling mansion on the Hudson where her mother died under mysterious circumstances, Camilla complies, partly out of curiosity for the family she never had, and partly because of whispers of an inheritance. What she finds there is a demanding and unwelcoming tyrant, two wraithlike aunts haunted by an unnamable grief, a cunning idler living off the Judd fortune, and her grandfather’s rigid and suspicious aide. When a series of accidents befall Camilla, she has reason to fear her homecoming may be a carefully designed trap—the same one her own mother fell prey to many years ago. New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author Phyllis A. Whitney “is, and always will be, the Grand Master of her craft” (Barbara Michaels). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Phyllis A. Whitney including rare images from the author’s estate.