It is a find of inestimable value for Karen Holloway. The battered manuscript she holds in her hand — written in the nineteenth century and bearing the mysterious attribution "Ismene" — could prove a boon to the eager young English professor's career. But Karen's search for the author's true identity is carrying her into the gray shadows of the past, to places fraught with danger and terror. For the deeper she delves into Ismene's strange tale of gothic horror, the more she is haunted by the suspicion that the long-dead author was writing the truth... and that even now she is guiding Karen's investigation, leading her to terrible secrets hidden behind the cold walls of houses of stone.