Haunted Heart

By Tania Donald

'Intoxicated as I am by my love for him, I am also afraid . . . What wickedness lurks within me, struggling to emerge?'
1838: In a quiet, English village, eighteen-year-old Eloise Morton yearns to experience love. The arrival of a handsome and aristocratic stranger fills her with hope, but their romantic courtship quickly descends into a maze of psychological games and strange, erotic encounters. Eloise finds herself suddenly alone, and transformed in ways that she cannot understand. But what has she become? Are the dark appetites that now compel her human, or otherwise? Is she victim, predator – or both? Eloise sets off on a perilous journey to the other side of the world to reunite with the man who haunts her heart – and to discover the shocking truth about herself.
Sexy, dark and thrilling, Haunted Heart is a breathtaking gothic novel about losing oneself to the heart's darkest desires.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
• Release date: Jun 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781742533537

Tania Donald

Tania Donald is a Melbourne-based author and artist. Her first novel, “Haunted Heart,” was published by Penguin in 2011. She holds a Ph.D in English Literature and has written for theatre, radio and cabaret. She is also the author of the forthcoming “Haunted Heart” sequel, “Fantôme Fatale.” Tania is inspired by classic literature of the fantastic, with favourite authors including H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James. She is also a fan of classic horror films. Her aim is to entertain readers with original gothic tales, supernatural thrills, psychological horror, and the tantalising notion that there may be more to this world than we realise....

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Reviews for Haunted Heart

[larissabookgirl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eloise was a simple village girl whose life was consumed by her rose garden, her dear friends Georgiana and Miriam, and the possibility Mr Jones, a very amiable man whom she could grow to care for over the years they might spend together as man and wife. Although this was the future she could expect, somehow Eloise couldn't help wanting more, more then her little village, more then an agreeable marriage. What she dreamt of was a deep romance, but the price for such love does not come cheap.

With the newly arrived Mr White comes new possibilities for Eloise. With his alluring presence in her life, Eloise is awakening to a passionate love filled with the joy of possibilities and the pain of neglect. However if Eloise is to survive this new love and her lovers demands she is going to have to survive a transformation that will lead her through dark and beguiling ways. But even if she survives this transformation she may still yet fall pray to a darker end.

Haunted Heart tells the tale of love, passion, danger and a life lived through any means with only one goal; survival. As one young girl crosses the threshold into womanhood, she steps between the boundaries of her moralistic society and into a world of dark seduction, a world that brings life with death, a world of loneliness and of great love. In this mixture of a Jane Austen character let loose in the world of Dracula, what follows is a provocative tale of romance, where in the end one woman will sacrifice all for her love.