Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

The Darkness Surrounds Us

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
0 of 1 copy available

"An early-autumn treat fit for late-night devouring." —Publishers Weekly

"A taut gothic mystery with an intriguing twist." —Susanna Calkins, award-winning author of the Lucy Campion Mysteries and the Speakeasy Murders

A Ghostly Window Into the Past

Nurse Nellie Lester can't escape death. Fleeing Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish flu, she takes a nursing job at a decrepit mansion on a desolate Michigan island. She's convinced the island holds the secret to her mother's murky past. The only problem? Her dead mother seems to have followed her there. Nightly she's haunted by a ghostly presence that appears in her bedroom. But is it her mother or something more sinister?

When the frozen body of the prior nurse is unearthed, Nellie suspects her family's history and the nurse's uncanny death are connected to a mysterious group that disappeared from the island twenty-four years earlier.

As winter closes in, past and present collide resurrecting a lurid killer, hell-bent on keeping the island's secrets. Will Nellie uncover her mother's shocking past before the killer enacts his final revenge?

"Lukasik blends all the elements needed for a dark suspense novel: a forbidding mansion, ghostly presences, secret passages, a hostile housekeeper, a temperamental employer, and residents unwilling to talk to outsiders. For fans of Rebecca, The Woman in White, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway." —Library Journal

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 31, 2023
      Lukasik (White Like Her) delivers a gripping ghost story of pandemics past in this well-crafted gothic mystery. During the 1918 flu epidemic, nurse Nellie Lester leaves her work in a Chicago contagion ward to care for the wife of a logger baron in a mansion on a Lake Michigan island that—based on an old photograph—she suspects may harbor secrets her late mother kept from her, including her father’s identity. Once there, Nellie is haunted by frequent visions of her mother’s ghost in the small turret bedroom she stays in, while the library offers hints that her parents were part of the mysterious community that built up and then abruptly abandoned the island two decades earlier. When the body of the mansion’s previous nurse turns up in the woods, Nellie attempts to investigate her death, but locals become increasingly angry about a stranger poking her nose into their business. Readers will sympathize with Nellie’s fears and frustrations, and Lukasik maintains a deliciously dark tension throughout. With unpredictable plotting and superior atmospherics, this is an early-autumn treat fit for late-night devouring.

    • Library Journal

      September 1, 2023

      In Lukasik's (Peak Season for Murder) first gothic mystery, nurse Nellie Lester flees Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak and takes a job at Ravenwood Manor on a desolate Michigan island. The job's main appeal is not her patient but a chance to find out who Nellie's father was and the secret to her mother's past, which is hidden on the island. When the frozen body of Ravenwood's previous nurse, Irene Hayes, is discovered near the island logging camp, Nellie is sure she was murdered. Does her death have any connection to her mother's time on the island when she belonged to an extreme religious community? After the island's priest urges Nellie to find an old diary that was read and then hidden by Irene, he dies under questionable circumstances. With her patient no longer needing her services, Nellie has little time left to figure out whom she can trust and who would kill to keep the island's secrets. VERDICT Lukasik blends all the elements needed for a dark suspense novel: a forbidding mansion, ghostly presences, secret passages, a hostile housekeeper, a temperamental employer, and residents unwilling to talk to outsiders. For fans of Rebecca, The Woman in White, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway.--Jean King

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check out what's being checked out right now This project is made possible by CW MARS member libraries, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.