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by Isabel Cañas
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz's sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo's sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz's fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?
Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.
Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.
Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz's doom.
"Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in Cañas's stunning debut...Cañas clearly knows the genre, alternately deploying and subverting haunted house tropes. The result is a brilliant contribution to the new wave of postcolonial Gothics. Readers won't want to miss this." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Reminiscent of both Jane Eyre and Carol Goodman's The Widow's House (2017), this can be offered to fans of Gothic suspense." - Booklist
"Debut gothic thrills appropriately billed for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic and Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer." - Library Journal
"[A] blend of horror and mystery with a gothic heart, complete with a heroine on the brink of madness, running into the night in fear. This chilling read exposes the rotting soul of colonialism and manages to be wildly entertaining while doing so." - Shelf Awareness
"Don't read this gothic horror right before bedtime, especially if you're prone to nightmares." - Good Housekeeping
"A haunted history, a gory gothic, a forbidden romance. This book kept me up at night, and it was worth every second of lost sleep." - Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Once and Future Witches
"A hypnotic, sinister tale that is equal parts terrifying and luxurious. Cañas's debut is a nightmare lined with velvet." - Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Wolves
"A haunting gorgeous tale of doomed love, vengeful spirits, and tortured faith that I could not put down." - S.A. Chakraborty, bestselling author of The Empire of Gold
This information about The Hacienda was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, and Turkey, among other places, she has settled (for now) in New York City, where she works on her PhD dissertation in medieval Islamic literature and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage.
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