The Red Lamp

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

After inheriting an old seaside house, a professor finds it haunted by supernatural mysteries.

Though he likes to joke about the spirit world, William Porter does not really believe in ghosts. As a professor, he cannot afford to take seriously that which goes bump in the night. But his wife, Jane, is prone to visions, like the one she had last summer about William's uncle Horace lying dead on the floor -- a dream that came just hours before they got the news that the old man had passed away.

A year later, William plans to spend the summer at his recently inherited beachfront property with Jane, but a feeling of psychic dread gives her hesitation, and William will later regret convincing her to go. The house is musty, eerie, and littered with supernatural portents -- most chillingly, the faint red light that glows in the wee hours. If they don't escape soon, William and his wife may be visiting the spirit world themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784088293

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Often referred to as the American Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American journalist and writer who is best known for the murder mystery The Circular Staircase—considered to have started the “Had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing—and the popular Tish mystery series. A prolific writer, Rinehart was originally educated as a nurse, but turned to writing as a source of income after the 1903 stock market crash. Although primarily a fiction writer, Rinehart served as the Saturday Evening Post’s correspondent for from the Belgian front during the First World War, and later published a series of travelogues and an autobiography. Roberts died in New York City in 1958.