J. Matthew Saunders

Sometimes the skeletons in the closet are real. Greenville, South Carolina, 1972. The ghosts and demons are real, too. Penelope Drake should know. After all, her father's spirit haunts the office of the detective agency she inherited from him. Dreadful Penny: Haunted Past collects the first four novellas in the Dreadful Penny series. Dreadful Penny: When Ephraim Brown, an old friend of Penelope's father, asks her to investigate a break-in at his home, it soon becomes clear someone is using dark magic to try to destroy him and his family, and it's up to Penelope to stop it. Unsettled Spirits: A strange accident puts an employee of Ephraim Brown in the hospital. When Ephraim's son Bertram calls on Penelope to help, she finds herself drawn into the Brown's family intrigues again. The more Penelope investigates, though, the closer she gets to uncovering secrets about her own family. Local Haunts: A string of brutal murders has the city on edge. All the victims have one thing in common-they worked for Ephraim Brown. With the police stumped, Penelope takes it upon herself to follow the grisly clues left by the killer. Legend Trip: The trouble with the Brown family never seems to end. When Ephraim is abducted by supernatural forces, Penelope must try save him once more. Her only clue is a cryptic one-word message-happiness. Could it also be the key to finally learning all the secrets her father kept from her?

Happiness is more than just a state of mind.Greenville, South Carolina, 1972Penelope's father is gone, again. His ghost doesn't haunt the home they used to share anymore- not since a rogue magician tried to kill her and her friends there. She's not ready to let him go, though, and his absence has left her adrift.Zed, meanwhile, is preoccupied with his new relationship, but the strain of having to hide his involvement with Jake Dempsey threatens to push them apart, not to mention Jake's disturbing prophetic visions. At the same time, Charles is pulled farther into the alternate world of the enchanting jazz singer Millie Priest. As the date of her real-life death draws closer, Charles desperately tries to piece together how she was killed, without knowing if he can stop her murder, or if he should.But the trouble with the Brown family never seems to end. When Ephraim Brown is abducted by supernatural forces, the trio must once again come together to save him. Their only clue is a cryptic one-word message-happiness. Could it also be the key to finally learning all the secrets Penelope's father kept from her?

Berlin, Germany, 1878: Lady Elizabeth James, the neglected wife of a British diplomat, receives a disturbing reminder of her past-a calling card bearing her father's name. But he disappeared ten years earlier, and Elizabeth believes him dead. When a murder at the British embassy raises even more questions about her father, Elizabeth finds a number of unlikely allies, including an American named Thomas Parson, a self-styled vampire hunter. She becomes embroiled in an intrigue involving fortunetellers, assassins, and foreign spies, but dark forces threaten her at every turn, and as she discovers, even friends harbor deadly secrets.Bucharest, Romania, 1999: Adam Mire reels at the abduction of his one-time love, Clara MacIntosh. Left with the admonition to "work faster," Adam knows he'll only see Clara again if he can find Dracula's infamous medallion. Using the clues he's pieced together, he follows a bloody trail across Romania, but Clara's time is running out.Meanwhile, Clara finds herself in a secluded manor house, the captive of a man both seductive and terrifying. Plagued by dreams of Elizabeth's life in Berlin, Clara works to uncover her mysterious host's agenda. However, she soon realizes both she and Adam are pawns in the schemes of all three of Dracula's Brides, and to stop them, someone will have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Gracanica. Kosovo, 1689: Elena, an Albanian peasant girl, has sacrificed her own future to keep her family from starving, but one horrific night they are taken from her, murdered by monsters out of her nightmares. She seeks refuge at the nearby monastery, where she meets Stjepan, a Serbian monk familiar with creatures that stalk the night. Elena longs to return to her farm, but piecing her life back together may be impossible. Stjepan draws her into a dark conspiracy involving an ancient brotherhood, and as war looms, a stranger named Lek appears, threatening to overturn everything she thought she knew about her family and herself.Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1999: Since surviving the showdown between the vampire Yasamin and the terrorist group S leyman's Blade, Adam Mire has lived in hiding, posing as an unassuming Czech librarian. His life is upended again, however, when a new threat arises-one intent on using Dracula's legacy to unleash another wave of violence across the already war-ravaged nation.Meanwhile, Clara MacIntosh, the love Adam left behind, has come to Eastern Europe to find him. While tracking him down, she becomes entangled in a string of grisly murders-deaths Adam is investigating as well. As they both follow clues literally written in blood, time runs short to unmask the killer before history comes full-circle and chaos engulfs the region again.