This classic Gothic romance, hailed by the Boston Globe as "a gem of its species," tells the spine-tingling story of a young woman caught up in an English manor's shadowed, violent past-and confronted by the very real dangers that lie within  Fanny Davenport has lived at Darkwater ever since she was brought there as a young orphan. She both loves and detests the forbidding English estate on the moors, haunted by the death of its long-ago mistress. When the scream of a bird caught in the chimney pierces the gloom one night, she knows it to be a harbinger of violent things to come.  It all begins when Fanny boards a ship to pick up two Chinese children who have been entrusted to her uncle's care. But Adam Marsh, the handsome stranger who hands over the sister and brother, may be an imposter. Then the children's elderly amah disappears. The reappearance of Adam Marsh only raises more questions. Can Fanny trust him? Is he her only ally against a cunning killer waiting to claim one more life?