The Poe Plot

Death, the Bride *Somewhere in this world there is a portrait of Death. "Death, the Bride" it is called. She is a beautiful young woman with dark, curly hair and pale, luminous gray eyes. She is smiling: a knowing, terrifying smile. She holds a sheaf of poppies, which symbolize sleep--and Death, the final sleep from which no one awakes. As you gaze at her portrait and, perhaps, admire it, her eyes meet yours. You want to look away, but you cannot because she is Death and she will win in the end. She knows you cannot escape her. No one can. And so she smiles--a haunting, eerie smile--and she waits. I lie in my bed, in the room in my mother's house that was my room when I was a child, and I see that portrait in my mind. But sometimes I am confused. Is it Death I see? Or is it Serena?* The Secret Room These opening lines of The Poe Plot draw the reader into a harrowing tale of psychological lust, suspense, a terrifying maze of fear, lust and death. A secret diary kept by a young woman loved by Edgar Allan Poe.... A secret room at the top of Harwood House, its padded walls a sinister reminder of the madwoman once kept captive there... A secret passion that leads to nightmare...and murder. Obsession…and Revenge You are a young woman recently "let go" from your teaching job at a college near Boston. You have reconnected with a friend who married a wealthy older man. She invites you to stay at the family mansion on Boston's North Shore while you search for a new position. Gratefully, you accept. But as you discover, all is not what it seems at Harwood House, a place haunted by the dark spirit of Edgar Allan Poe--and the dark secrets of the people who live there now. Frederic Harwood is a Poe connoisseur who believes that his young wife's family home in Lowell, Massachusetts, now destroyed, may have held unknown, unpublished Poe manuscripts and letters. He thinks his wife knows where they are. But she won't tell him...and he won't tell her his own secret. But he will try to entice you, her friend, to stay at Harwood House with the promise of reading a diary kept by Poe's beloved "Annie." Gradually, as you read, always at night, always in secret, you become obsessed with the thought of those lost manuscripts. More, you become obsessed with the dark spirit of the master of Gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe. You begin to plan...and plot. Do some of Poe's priceless manuscripts and letters still exist, hidden somewhere in Harwood House? And if they do, could you discover them? What happened to them? Why does your friend allow her husband to dominate her, threaten her, keep her prisoner here at Harwood House? And why does Frederic's handsome younger brother secretly make love to you? Do you love him? Can you love him? Or must you escape Harwood House now, before you become its prisoner also? The sequel to the widely praised The Poe Papers, The Poe Plot is a chilling tale of a man's obsession--and a woman's revenge