Moonlight, Magnolias, and Magic

A cursed ring. A forgotten grave. A magical enemy. Can Annabella escape her family's fate?

Annabella has done her best to put behind her all memories of her childhood being raised as an unwanted ward in the gothic family mansion. As the secretary to the flamboyant Errol, Duke of Winchester, she's seen the world and avoided her family's clutches.

But now she must return to that elegantly-decayed, antebellum house on the historic Battery in Charleston, South Carolina, where the "moonlight and magnolias" atmosphere hides some deadly family secrets. Returning for the wake of her aged relative, Henrietta, who hasn't left her South of Broad showplace for decades, Annabella walks into the chilly embrace of her Cousin Beatrix and the woman's much-too-attractive new assistant, Armand, whose words of encouragement and warning keep arriving inexplicably in her mind.

In just a few hours, the house reclaims her. She finds herself waking up in her deceased relative's bed and clothes, Henrietta's ring on an unremovable chain around her neck. And, even as she begins to realize that magic is real and her friends and Armand hope to save her with it, it's starting to look as though the terrifying mansion and its demonic secrets may never let her leave.

Katherine Gilbert, author of the quirky urban fantasies Protecting the Dead and Unearthly Remains, shows a more serious side in this chilling Southern Gothic tale (but not without a bit of quirk!). On a Gilbert wackiness scale of 1-to-10 sarcastic talking cats*, this one is about a 3.

*Warning: Not all stories contain talking cats. Wackiness may take other forms.