The Lady of the Shroud

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author known today for his 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned. The world's best reputation obtained by his marvelous novel Dracula that even nowadays is the bestseller which breaks records.

 

The lady of the Shroud is a novel written in an epistolary genre, narrated in the first person via letters and diary extracts from various characters, but mainly Rupert. The initial sections, leading up to the reading of the uncle's will, told by other characters, suggest that Rupert is the black sheep of the family, and the conditions of having to live in the castle in the Blue Mountains for a year before he can permanently inherit the unexpectedly large million-pound estate suggest the uncle is somehow testing the heir. Who is that uncle? A usual victim without any suspicion or a sly predator?