The Dead Smile

Why is that sinister smile upon the lips of dying Sir Hugh Ochram? Why hasn't he anything against his son Gabriel marrying Evelyn Warturton? What is the deeper secret behind the 'dead' smile and what does 100 year old Nurse MacDonald know about? This story is a real gothic masterpiece full of gloomy......more

I'm pleased to continue with my Halloween reading. This was rather dated, so I was able to see the mystery from miles away. I figured it out from the moment it was brought up, actually, but that's really no fault of Mr. Crawford. The twist has been used so many times in modern soap operas, movies, st......more

4.5⭐ A definite template for a Victorian gothic horror masterpiece with hints of influence from Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables with the fear of inheriting the guilt of forebearers. A true period piece of charnel secrets of lust that hint from the be......more

4.3 stars! "Sir Hugh Ockram smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in the late August afternoon; and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscured the low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had been suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague." -F. Mario......more