Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

By Cora Raven

Penniless, shunned by society, and marked forever by her mother's descent into madness, Lucy makes a desperate choice. She slips uninvited into London's most lavish masquerade ball, hiding behind a mask of desperation to secure the one thing she cannot survive without-marriage.

Champagne loosens her fear. Music blurs her judgment. And then she sees him.

The masked stranger that sends her heart racing. Seductive, watchful, and unsettlingly familiar, he draws Lucy into a dangerous dance that ends in public ruin... and a forced marriage neither of them can escape.

When the masks come off, the man who broke her heart years ago stands before her.

Sylum Deveroux, Duke of Blackthorn, vanished into scandal after a forced engagement to a woman who would never walk down the aisle. Tarnished by accusations of murder, he was never supposed to be in London...

Now she must risk it all to be with the man she never stopped loving. But once Lucy arrives at Blackthorn Manor, the true nightmare begins.

Footsteps echo outside her door. The servants watch her too closely. Sylum appears where he should not, says things he swears he never said, and a raven named Poe croons riddles about shadows, bones, and divided minds.

Is her new husband plotting her destruction?
Is the manor haunted by the ghost of his dead fianc e?
Or is Lucy unraveling exactly as everyone always feared she would?

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Once Upon A Midnight Dreary is a gothic psychological romance with a torturously slow descent into madness, steeped in obsession, and macabre desire. A fever-dream of a novel where truth fractures, love becomes dangerous, and the mind may be the most treacherous monster of all.

This book is a dark gothic romance intended for adult readers 18+

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FSKBYT6D
• ISBN13: 9798290794358
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"