The Daughters of Block Island

by Christa Carmen

It is the Castle of Otranto. Ambrosio’s abbey. Manderley. Udolpho. Every setting from every novel that has held her rapt and terrified over the years. It will hold her within its walls until her reason for coming to the island disintegrates beneath her. It is claustrophobia and decay and tragedy too intense for her fragile, newly recovered self to take.

By the time Blake pulls into the circular drive at the front of White Hall, however, she sees she was wrong. The sky darkens from moonstone to hematite, hematite to obsidian. Clouds travel like race cars, trees bend like promises, and the rain comes down harder than ever.