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STEVE MERRIFIELD
TALES OF SUPERNATURAL MYSTERY & HORROR
THE DARKWOOD MYSTERIES
Available from most good e-book retailers.
Emily Darkwood is already resisting Victorian society's expectations of her as a woman of the upper classes, when she receives a strange and life-changing inheritance in the wake of her missing parents. A stone of amber that draws her into mysteries, supernatural, cosmic, and criminal. Armed with this guide stone, her wits, revolver, sword-stick umbrella, and faithful servant-companion, the streetwise, scrappy, and young Jack Hobbs, she determines to challenge the mysteries and threats she encounters in her search to understand the origin and power of the stone and its connection to her parents—and their fates. Yet dark forces conspire against her, and her drive for answers and her fight against the darkness of the world risks fought for medical studies, her friends, family—and her life.
The Darkwood Mysteries are a series of short-stories, novellas, and novels that can largely be enjoyed as standalone tales of horror and adventure from any point, or together in order as part of a deeper mystery.
1
The Thief of Faces
Why is Emily Darkwood keeping vigil at her friend's tomb? Darkwood hunts a killer with a gruesome signature mutilation. What does a murderer want with his victim's faces? With her suspect protected by his position in society, Darkwood and her servant-companion, Jack Hobbs, must confront him alone. Four dark-haired and dark-eyed women are dead. Will Darkwood become the fifth?
(short story)
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2
The Posthumous Child
What secret haunts the country estate of Cecil House? Darkwood, friend to the family, administers to a cherished servant of the household on her deathbed. After her death, the Cecil family experiences a ghostly tormentor, and Darkwood receives leading messages from the other side that she determines to follow to a dark truth. What does a spirit child want to be known?
(short story)
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3
The Luminous Marks
Why have curious glowing marks been left at sites of peculiar petty thefts? Darkwood has deciphered them and searches for their maker in London's fog shrouded night—only to find they have a terrifying source. Darkwood, Hobbs, and Detective Inspector Duggan take their pursuit into dangerous slums, and within they find themselves on the threshold to an altogether different world...
(short story)
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4
The Wrath of the Dragon
Who or what is causing terrible fires in the slums of London's East End?
With Chinese characters found at the scenes of devastation, London's immigrant population falls under suspicion. Darkwood and Hobbs discover British and Chinese agents on the streets hunting a criminal, while a superstitious fear haunts Londoners—could there really be a dragon in London?
(novella)
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5
The Peacock Cabal
Darkwood's latest patient is a young man drained of vitality. He is soon dead. He is not the first to suffer such a fate. What killed him? Men of the green carnation—men who love men—are dying and the secrecy surrounding their love hides the cause. Darkwood finds the truth, not in medicine, but in her patient's tomb. Darkwood and Hobbs discover a conspiracy and a sinister predatory threat...
(short story)
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6
The Cult of the Scarab
Darkwood attends the unwrapping of a mummified ancient Egyptian at the British Museum. The spectacle is soon followed by the brutal death of a museum attendant and a missing mummy. How do the events connect to Darkwood's nightmarish visions of metallic beetles swarming a foreign red land? The answer is found in death...
(short story)
7
The Hag on the Heath
Darkwood is called upon by an acquaintance, Patrin Deakin, to his daughter's sickbed. What ails Florica? The wild of Hampstead Heath is beyond their door, as is something else; a supernatural crone. Why is Florica her target? Darkwood, Hobbs, and the family's gypsy kin embark on a hunt for a witch. But is all as it seems?
(short story)
8
The Rat King
Board members of a charity suffer tragic ends. Where others see unfortunate coincidence, Darkwood suspects murder most strange—death through the mischief of rats... Have rats turned upon us, or is someone or something behind the attacks? What is driving the rat king swarm to kill? With Darkwood's aunt made a member of the board, the stakes become personal...
(short story)
9
The Spindly-Snatcher
Why is a writer burning down bookshops? Why does insanity and death surround the answer? Darkwood and Hobbs investigate a creeping madness that no asylum can tame or contain, and in doing so they find a terrible something stalking between fear and insanity. To know of the Spindly-Snatcher is to be known to it—have the hunters become the hunted?
(novella)
10
The Conspiracies of Shadow & Fire
Darkwood is visited by her once intended husband, the disgraced Paul Whittacker. He warns that a conspiracy thought foiled was not given up on. Plots in the past unfold in the present and pitch Darkwood and Hobbs into a desperate struggle. Who can they trust? As the Hellfire Club and agents of darkness manoeuvre Darkwood and her stone into their traps, will she escape the ultimate evil?
(novel)
11
The Hound at the Door
Why are former attendees of séances being hunted by a phantom hound and disappearing? Darkwood, Hobbs, and a reluctant Inspector Duggan, pose as grieving relatives to visit the spiritual medium who hosts the seances to find out. Together, they enter the pitch black of the séance room and sit among spirits in wait for the prowl of a spectral beast. What does the dog in the dark want of its victims?
(novella)
12
The Silence of the Veiled Lady
Professor Meredith and his wife supported Emily Darkwood's entry into her surgical studies. Both are now tormented. Mrs Meredith is trapped by a covenant she was sworn to maintain into death and beyond. The professor is haunted by a missing box and the apparent supernatural force that has taken it. What is the secret, and what is in the box? Darkwood is determined to find out—and see justice done.
(novella)
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13
The Philanthropy of the Dead
The once dead Montgomery Woods awakens in his tomb. Returned to the living. But why is he set on casting his family into poverty by signing away his wealth? Why have five other men awakened from apparent death to do just the same? Darkwood, Hobbs, and Mr Woods junior have little time to discover the truth before the Woods family is ruined—and face a death cult set upon protecting their plans...
(novella)
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14
The Ghosts of the Black Museum
Irene Reuben, spiritual medium, and friend and ally to Darkwood and Hobbs, encounters spiritual tormentors through Scotland Yard's crime museum. Are phantom children unknown victims of the historic Creeping Ghost Killer? Has the executed murderer returned as an actual ghost? Reuben, Darkwood, and Hobbs investigate as spiritual prompts become a harrowing haunting that risks their lives...
(novella)
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DARKWOOD AND HOBBS RETURN IN:
15
The City of the Drowning
Darkwood has sent Hobbs away. In the care of Inspector Duggan, Hobbs questions the unconvincing reason for his exile and potentially a life without Darkwood and his duty to her—but danger remains. Great sums of money are being left on the streets of London, creating rich from the poor. Who is doing it, and why? With growing tension between the haves and have-nots, Duggan and Hobbs investigate...
(novella)
Release date October 2024
16
The Rise of the Dragon
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17
The Book of Lies
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18
The Slaves of the Underworld
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19
The Gathering of Shadow & Fire
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20
The Disaster Man
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