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This Week’s Subscriber Giveaway: A Vivid Press Edition of Genre Classic ‘The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehard
The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehard
A Vivid Press EditionSUBSRIBE AND DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY
Welcome to another LGBTSr subscriber giveaway!
This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.
So begins one of the most entertaining and shrewdly constructed mysteries in American fiction.
Rachel Innes has no intention of playing detective. She simply wants a quiet summer at Sunnyside, a sprawling country house rented while its owners are away in California. But the first night brings strange sounds on the staircase. By the third, the servants have fled. And by the fourth, there is a dead man at the bottom of the circular staircase — a man her niece and nephew knew all too well.
What follows is murder, a vanished nephew, a bankrupt bank, hidden rooms, buried secrets, and a house that refuses to surrender its dead. Through it all, Rachel Innes — sharp-tongued, clear-eyed, and utterly unwilling to be frightened off her own lease — refuses to leave until she knows the truth.
First published in 1908, The Circular Staircase launched Mary Roberts Rinehart to national fame and sold over a million copies. It pioneered the “Had-I-But-Known” school of mystery writing, inspired the Broadway sensation The Bat, and gave Bob Kane one of the early sparks for Batman. At the peak of her popularity, Rinehart was more widely read than Agatha Christie.
She deserves to be read again.
A Vivid Press Annotated Edition of a Genre Classic vividpress.com
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LGBT Senior Subscriber Freebie: The Vivid Press Edition of Vampire Classic ‘Carmilla’
Before There Was Dracula, There Was Carmilla
A Gothic masterpiece — and it’s yours free.
Most people know the name Dracula. Far fewer know the name Carmilla — and that’s a shame, because Carmilla came first.
Published in 1872, more than two decades before Bram Stoker’s famous count ever set foot on English soil, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla introduced the world to the vampire as a figure of seduction, obsession, and dread. It was groundbreaking then. It remains essential now. And it has a particular resonance for LGBTQ readers that no other vampire story quite matches.
We’re delighted to offer LGBTSr subscriber the Vivid Press Edition of Carmilla, both the ebook and audiobook editions. Beautifully produced with an original introduction written exclusively for this edition, this is complimentary for you, our readers. Current subscribers will receive in this week’s newsletter. Not signed up yet? HERE’S YOUR CHANCE.
