The Wyvern Mystery

"[Le Fanu] succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer." — M. R. James. A beautiful heroine marries the heir to a local estate — but what sounds like a happy ending is just the beginning of a chilling and suspenseful thriller. Set in rural England of the 1820s, The Wyvern Mystery takes its title from ancient myth, in which a two-legged dragon called the "wyvern" signifies the truly sinister. Dark hints of the supernatural permeate this 1869 horror classic, which unfolds inside a haunted mansion, where a young bride is imperiled not only by family secrets from the past but also by evil machinations of the present. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (pronounced Leff-anew) was known as "the Dark Prince" by a wide circle of avid readers during his heyday in the late nineteenth century. The Victorian equivalent of Stephen King, Le Fanu created a compelling series of Gothic novels and ghost stories that Henry James characterized as "the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight."