Haunted Summer

Bereaved and alone, Mary Shelley looks back on the first magical summer abroad she shared with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

As a teenage Mary knew as soon as she saw Shelley that her life had been touched by genius.

There was immediately between them the volcanic forces of the erotic and the intellectual that made their final union predestined.

But Shelley was already wed.

Along with Mary’s half sister, Claire Clairmont, nineteen-year old Mary, and twenty-three year old Shelly eloped to Switzerland, damning themselves, and becoming fugitives from their own country.

And Claire was also harbouring a secret: she was carrying the bastard child of Lord Byron, and had directed their trip in the hope of finding him.

To Claire’s delight Byron shares their hotel, but Mary is worried for her, as she catches him looking upon her with disgust.

Along with Byron was his attendant, Dr. Polidori, a handsome half-Italian, who Mary instantly takes a dislike to.

But Shelley and Lord Byron are instantly drawn together. Both are poets; children of the Revolution; and exiles.

And their friendship meant the five became a close group.

Byron proposes a challenge: each should tell a ghost story.

At first Mary struggles, but after searching deep within her soul, Frankenstein is born…

As the summer days stretch on, tension starts to grow within the group.

And it soon becomes apparent that they will eventually have to return to reality.

Can Mary protect Claire from Byron’s true feelings?

Will Byron’s destructive streak sabotage her relationship with Shelley?

‘Haunted Summer’ tells a spine-chilling, gothic tale of the dark tangle of love and madness that bound together literature’s greatest Romantic figures.

‘Opium-inspired nights spent in the haunted, gloomy vaults of the Castle of Chillon … a persuasively true tale of violence, passion and madness’ - The Evening News

Anne Edwards is an American author best known for her biographies of celebrities that include Princess Diana, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Ronald Reagan, and Barbra Streisand. He novels include ‘The Survivors’ and ‘Wallis: The Novel’. She lives in Beverly Hills.

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