First published 2025
Winifred Notty takes her position at Ensor House with every intention of being the ideal Victorian governess. She plans to teach Drusilla and Andrew their lessons, share bedtime stories, and keep her darker impulses in check. The estate feels suffocating, and the Pounds family reveals themselves to be deeply flawed people with twisted obsessions. Winifred finds her carefully maintained facade beginning to crack. She wanders the grounds at night in her undergarments and torments the servants with subtle cruelties. Her past contains terrible urges that she has worked to suppress, but the oppressive atmosphere of Ensor House makes control increasingly difficult. Christmas morning arrives, and the thin barrier between Winifred's disturbed fantasies and the real world finally collapses completely.
Genres: fiction, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-horror, dark
Vibes: atmospheric, claustrophobic, dark, menacing, psychologically-intense, unsettling
Tropes: dark-secrets, descent-into-madness, facade-cracking, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ensor House
Period: Victorian era, Christmas
192 pages · Paperback · Fourth Estate
Content warnings: abuse, mental-illness