The House Without a Summer

Reads 12
Votes 1
Parts 3
Time 32m

Reads 12
Votes 1
Parts 3
Time 32m

Northamptonshire, England.  1816.

It has been a harsh winter, with killing temperatures and heavy snow.  The Christmas holidays have passed.  Colin deserves to escape from the old family ruins--or, rather, one of the grandest country houses in England, Penderbrook--and resume his post-Napoleonic debauchery in London.  He has a rather large allowance to waste in profligacy, and he hasn't even made a dent in it yet.

His older brother William, the heir to Penderbrook, had too weak a heart to fight in the wars.  Instead he has been progressing the amount of scientific knowledge of England--a quieter war, but not without its own battles.  Ones that he is patiently winning, becoming one of the most renowned naturalists of his time.

Then one day William walks out onto the frozen pond in the middle of a blizzard and shoots himself.

Colin and William's studious, schoolmarmish fiancee Lucy are left behind to discover what caused William to self-murder.  A lost journal, a dead factotum dealing mainly in orphans, a factory plagued by a fungus that seems to be colored with blood, dark shapes moving through the neverending snow...

The clues point toward something more monstrous than even a rake like Colin could ever imagine.

WORK IN PROGRESS.  I need support on this one, it's like my fifth major rewrite on this thing.  Please say something nice.  Lie if you have to...All Rights Reserved

Table of contents

3 parts

Content Guidelines

You may also like

Emmy's life is going just as she'd planned: She's living in her own apartment, dancing every day and is just leaps away from being named her company's next Prima ballerina. And she's only 17. But all of Emmy's plans come to a screeching halt when the FBI shows up at her door to let her know that she's being stalked by a serial killer. Suddenly, the safe, insulated world she created for herself is riddled with violence, fear...and a growing pile of dead bodies. At first Emmy wants nothing more than to forget her chilling new reality - but her admirer isn't finished with her yet, and before she knows it, Emmy's stuck in a nightmare she can't dance her way out of. Content and/or trigger warning: This story contains detailed scenes of murder, rape, torture, sex and stalking, which may be triggering for some readers. [[word count: 80,000-90,000 words]]

Serial

Emmy's life is going just as she'd planned: She's living in her own apartment, dancing every day and is just leaps away from being named her company's next Prima ballerina. And she's only 17. But all of Emmy's plans come to a screeching halt when the FBI shows up at her door to let her know that she's being stalked by a serial killer. Suddenly, the safe, insulated world she created for herself is riddled with violence, fear...and a growing pile of dead bodies. At first Emmy wants nothing more than to forget her chilling new reality - but her admirer isn't finished with her yet, and before she knows it, Emmy's stuck in a nightmare she can't dance her way out of. Content and/or trigger warning: This story contains detailed scenes of murder, rape, torture, sex and stalking, which may be triggering for some readers. [[word count: 80,000-90,000 words]]

More details