Descent into Dust  by Jacqueline Lepore

Jacqueline Lepore’s Descent into Dust is an atmospheric Victorian pastiche complete with a forbidding mansion, an innocent child in danger, the shadow of madness, and vampires. Emma Andrews is a young and wealthy widow coming to the moors to visit her newly married half-sister and their cousins. Emma has always felt like an outsider. The specter of her mother’s madness and death haunt her. Soon after arriving at Dulwich Manor, Emma has a frightening encounter on the moors. The house, which has a strong Catholic history, has Latin aphorisms carved onto its walls, and most of them, when Emma translates them, add to her sense of foreboding. Emma distrusts her own senses, but she should not. The village and the prehistoric settlement on the hill beyond the house are the home to an ancient evil, and that evil has drawn a powerful vampire determined to waken it. Read More