In this ingenious and subversive twist on the classic gothic novel, the mysterious past of an island mansion lures two sisters into a spiderweb of scandal, secrets, and murder. Two sisters, strangers since birth yet bound by family secrets, are caught up in a century-old mystery on an isolated island. After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she's the heroine of a gothic novel-the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls? But before Blake can discern the novel's ending, she's found dead, murdered in a claw-foot tub. The proprietress of White Hall stands accused. Summoned by a letter sent from Blake before she died, Thalia Mills returns to the island she swore she'd left for good. She finds that Blake wasn't the first to die at White Hall under suspicious circumstances. Thalia must uncover the real reason for Blake's demise before the forces conspiring to keep Block Island's secrets dead and buried rise up to consume her too.