America’s Most Gothic

Haunted History Stranger than Fiction

by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes

Published by: Kensington

Imprint: Citadel

320 Pages, 5.50 x 8.25 in

ISBN: 9780806543741
On Sale: 07/29/2025
HISTORY / Women

$29.00 (USD)

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The Gothic. Brooding, atmospheric, chilling, and not always the outpouring of a feverish imagination. Reality can be even stranger as borne out in this lush and ghostly look at real people who lived--and died—amidst the trappings of the Gothic.

Fog clinging to an isolated mansion. A dangerous patriarch or an overbearing matron. Locked doors and forbidden rooms. Whispers of murder and madness. And a woman shadowed by omnipresent threats. You’ve guessed it. You’ve stumbled into a Gothic tale, and it will haunt you like a ghost.

We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film—breath-catching escapes that tap into our fears, anxieties, forbidden desires, and unsettling dreams. But what if some of these chilly vibes are rooted in the experiences of real and tragic people who danced a macabre waltz with love and death? That’s why we’re here. Take the case of teenage Mercy Brown, victim—or was it predator?—of Rhode Island’s vampire hysteria of the 1890s. Marguerite de la Roque, a French noblewoman condemned for “sexual crimes” to Canada’s long-lost Isle of Demons. What happened to her and the barren landscape itself is the stuff of legend. And “Mad Lucy” Ludwell, the decidedly peculiar eighteenth-century high-society hauteur driven mad in the Virginia estate she prowls to this day. President Helen Peabody’s spirit still stringently watches over her Women’s College, now part of Ohio’s Miami University. Ghosts of workers lost in horrific conditions while building the Hoosac Tunnel warn of imminent danger. Settle in. There are more.

Welcome to the phantom ships, haunted academic halls, menacing landscapes, and family curses of America’s Most Gothic—a tour of true spectral sightings and disordered minds. But beware: it’s sure to get under your skin. The haunted—and haunting—figures herein want it that way.

Actress, playwright and author Leanna Renee Hieber is the award-winning, bestselling writer of gothic Victorian fantasy novels for adults and teens. Her novels such as the Strangely Beautiful saga, and the Eterna Files series have garnered numerous regional genre awards, including four Prism awards, and have been selected as "Indie Next" and national book club picks. She lives in New York City where she is a licensed ghost tour guide and has been featured in film and television shows like Boardwalk Empire. Follow her on Twitter@leannarenee, or visit www.leannareneehieber.com.
Andrea Janes is the Founder and owner of Boroughs of the Dead, New York City's premier ghost tour company, which has been featured on NPR.org, The New York Times, Jezebel, TODAY, The Huffington Post, Gothamist,The Travel Channel, CondeNast Traveler, Mashable, among others. Andrea is also the author of the YA novel Glamour, and several short horror stories, and a fiction horror novel Boroughs of the Dead, the inspiration for her company. More at www.boroughsofthedead.com

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