Midnight Rooms: A Novel

Set in a foreboding Gothic mansion and infused with the heightened paranoia and creeping horror, a spine-chilling debut historical thriller from a fresh voice in the genre that will leave you questioning who, or what, you can trust . . . including your own sanity.“An immersive horror fairy tale marrying Crimson Peak to Pan’s Labyrinth upon strange foundations. You’re never really safe here, with Midnight Rooms wondrously defying expectation and refusing obedience. Donyae Coles leads us into a house of sinister magic, full of corners for peeking around, but careful—these walls have claws. A feverish, labyrinthine debut.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

A mysterious suitor. A secluded manor. And a heroine’s quest to uncover the mysteries hidden within its haunted halls.England, 1840. The orphaned daughter of a white man and a Black woman—an outsider with no fortune or connections—Orabella Mumthrope never expected to marry, until Elias Blakersby, the scion of a fabulously wealthy family, arrives at her uncle’s home, declaring a deep desire to make Orabella his wife. The new bride is quickly whisked away to Korringhill Manor, the Blakersby family estate where she is shocked to find decay, skittish servants, and curt elders. Despite Elias’s assurances, Orabella becomes increasingly unsettled. There is a darkness deep within this house. Rooms are kept locked or hidden away, and the walls seem to thrum with secrets. Orabella has little freedom, and soon, the darkness begins to engulf her, too. She suffers fitful sleep filled with macabre dreams, is awakened by blood-curdling screams, and rises from her bed covered in mysterious bruises. Confused and terrified, she begins to question where her dreams end and reality begins. The longer Orabella stays in this place, the more she loses parts of herself. . . . How long until she no longer exists?