Classic Gothic fiction

My Cousin Rachel

by Daphne du Maurier

Young Philip Ashley has been raised by his older cousin Ambrose, whose sudden marriage in Italy is followed by alarming letters and an unexplained death. Philip is prepared to hate Ambrose's widow Rachel when she arrives in Cornwall, but her charm and apparent vulnerability rapidly overturn his certainty. As attraction deepens, illness, money, and ambiguous evidence leave him unsure whether Rachel is a victim, a calculating murderer, or a woman he has never learned to see clearly. Seductive and unsettling, this novel suits readers who enjoy unreliable narrators, Cornish estates, poisonous suspicion, and endings that refuse to settle the question of guilt.