Customer Reviews

Ardent Apparitions

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This interesting tale published posthumously under Florence Stevenson's Regency pen name Ellen Fitzgerald would have fit better as one of her Gothic's. There is more suspense then romance but it was an enjoyable story all the same. Another reader of my copy wrote in the front cover "eerily weird" and she was right.

Arabella has been sent to her great aunt's house to recuperate a little from London town life. A beauty and heiress beset by many young men, I tend to think her father did not want her left with just a chaperone (another aunt) while he was in France on business. So off she goes to a rather austere castle populated by some very interesting relatives and FIVE ghosts!

The racket they make! Two young men fight with swords through the night, a young French beauty brought back as a war trophy who eventually murdered her English husband and children haunts the halls, and an ill-fated couple - a matron and her brother-in-law caught in rather compromising position in the hayloft were run through by her jealous husband and wander the halls together.

Besides the ghosts, there is the very handsome Sir Francis whom Arabella develops a tendre for! But does he return her love or is he infatuated by the pretty Constance, another cousin? Why are the ghosts becoming more bothersome? The inside cover leads you to believe Arabella falls in love with one of the ghosts, but that is not the case. All the inhabitants of the castle both living and dead are noteworthy. There is a mystery to solve and some danger for our intrepid castle dwellers. Read it and find out who wins in the end ... specter or man!