Author: Dorothy Eden
First publisher in 1962.
Re-issued by Open Road Media July 2013
For Cathleen Lamb, traveling to Dublin to record the history of the mystery-shrouded O’Riordan family is the answer to a prayer. Still grieving over the accident that killed her husband and baby daughter, she hopes to lose herself in other people’s lives.
But something sinister is going on at the ancient castle at the edge of the moors . . . something beyond the scandalous skeletons rattling around the O’Riordans’ closets. The former heir was killed three years earlier in a suspicious fall. The same night, the family matriarch suffered a stroke that left her mute.
Despite the malice that surrounds her, Cathleen is drawn to the brooding, darkly passionate man who is plotting to control the family. But even he may not be able to protect her when the crimes of the past reach into the present to terrorize the living.
I've had a few Throwback Thursday reads in the past couple of weeks that
just haven't been able to keep my interest. Sadly, Whistle for the Crows is another one. This one was the Retro Read pick for March. I was looking forward to reading this one. I mean who wouldn't love a Gothic romance/mystery. I think the problem with this one was that it was really dated. It was originally published in 1962. For me, it didn't carry over well. I found the characters uninteresting and the story kind of dull. I got about a third of the way in and found
I didn't want to finish. It has gotten some good feedback, so if the Gothic
genre is your thing, then give it a shot.
Author: Dorothy Eden
Reissue by Open Road Media July 2013
A special three-in-one edition by Dorothy Eden—featuring Bride by Candlelight, Cat’s Prey, and Bridge of Fear—in
which a bride-to-be, a wedding guest, and a recently married woman come
face to face with evil as they innocently prepare to celebrate love
Think well before you marry Paul Blaine.
In Bride by Candlelight, this anonymous note is the prelude to a series of disturbing events plaguing Julia Paget.
At an isolated New Zealand sheep-farming estate, she discovers that her
war-scarred husband-to-be isn’t the man she fell in love with three
years earlier.
In Cat’s Prey, Antonia Webb journeys to a
remote seaside resort in New Zealand to claim an inheritance and attend
her cousin’s wedding. And even the handsome solicitor who warns her
away may not be able to protect Antonia from the evil closing around
her.
Is Abby Fearon paranoid—or is someone trying to kill her? In Bridge of Fear,
this is the question she must answer. Abby arrives in the Australian
outback from her native England to find that something has changed in
her new husband . . . something that frightens her almost as much as the
strange, wild land she now calls home.
Open Road Media has recently reissued works by the late Dorothy Eden. She was a well known author of mystery and romance from the 1940s through the 1980s. She died in 1982. Out of the bundle in Sinister Weddings, I chose to review Bride by Candlelight for Throwback Thursday. It was originally published in 1954 by Mcdonald.
The story for me was ultimately, just OK. It definitely showed its age. The one thing I did like about it was it had that creepy Gothic feel to it. I could almost picture it as a old black and white movie. Julia was so naive and clueless. I was pretty much able to figure out the truth of Harry after the first 25 pages. I didn't know all of the details, but I got most of it correct. The ending was a bit rushed and not very believable. Despite not liking this one, I will give the other books in the collection a try.
