Dark Power

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Di Leonard has spent her life learning how to endure disappointment quietly, but nothing has prepared her for the day her employer's glittering wedding leaves her penniless, unpaid, and without the promised recommendation. With only a trunk, a quarter, and a stubborn will to survive, she is forced into a lonely search for shelter that leads her from a grim rooming house into the orbit of a bizarre and unsettling family. Rescued by the cheerful, elusive Uncle Peter, Di is taken to an isolated old house where Aunt Emma rules with surgical precision and little warmth. The place is half home, half institution: adopted children drift through it, secrets linger in the rooms, and even the air feels controlled. As Di begins to understand that she has been brought there not for comfort but for usefulness, she is drawn into a tense struggle over money, inheritance, and motive. When violence erupts and the household's fragile order collapses, Di discovers that Aunt Emma's cold intelligence hides not only danger but an unexpected, if severe, kind of care.