The Blackmere Letters
Three gothic romance mysteries by Eleanor Vale, set in one decaying house on the Cornish coast. A paper conservator reads the truth out of documents the dead left behind. Slow-burn, closed-door, and no vampires.
Start with Book One$2.99 at Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other stores. Also in library apps.
Some houses don't want to be remembered. They want to be read.
The series
Book One
A wife who ran away one storm-black night in 1974. Farewell letters in her hand. And a conservator who can see they are forged.
Iris Cole comes to Blackmere House to catalogue the papers of a woman she never met, who left a decaying coastal manor to a complete stranger. Behind a window-seat she finds the sealed letters of Margot Blackmere, and knows them for lies. Someone needed the world to believe a woman left when she did not.
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Book Two
A sealed letter of 1838, a parish that mourns bells it never heard, and a truth someone kind would rather stayed sealed.
Saltmarsh has a church tower with no bells in it. The village says a ship bringing six new bells was drawn on to the bar by a false light and went down with every soul. A letter written nine days after the wreck has never been read. To learn whose it is, Iris must follow the paper.
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Book Three
A packet sealed in black, a bride who was never married, and twelve sun pictures of 1841 that fade a little every time they are looked at.
Iris is to be married in the church where the parish still tells the story of the jilted bride of 1841. Then she finds the packet, with its order: Not to be opened while Blackmere is ours. To learn what happened on the headland that day, she must do what a conservator is trained never to do, and use up the thing she is keeping.
Get Book ThreeWhat you are getting
Cold rooms, sea fog and a house that seems to be listening. Not horror, and nobody is murdered in Books Two or Three.
Iris and Julian take three books to get from the gate of Blackmere House to a wedding on the page. Closed-door throughout.
Forged hands, burial registers that will not add up, a founder's ledger, an unfixed photograph. The clues are documents, and they are all shown to you.
Ghosts, perhaps. Vampires, never. The books leave you to decide what the house is doing.
The author
Eleanor Vale writes gothic romance mysteries filled with decaying houses, hidden rooms, old letters, slow-burn longing, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Her stories are for readers who love stormy estates, candlelit corridors, complicated heroines, and mysteries that feel both romantic and unsettling. She prefers ghosts to vampires, secrets to gore, and emotional tension to easy answers.
Eleanor Vale is a pen name.
Questions
Book One is the best place to start, because it is where Iris first comes to Blackmere House. Books Two and Three each have their own mystery and can be read on their own.
Closed-door. The romance is slow-burn and there is no explicit content.
They are atmospheric rather than frightening. There is no gore, and the haunting is never quite proved. If you want horror, these are not it.
Each book's link opens a page where you choose your store, including Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and Everand. The ebooks are $2.99 each, and stores outside the United States show the price in local currency.
Yes. The books are offered to libraries through OverDrive, cloudLibrary and BorrowBox. If your library does not have them yet, you can ask it to add them.
Yes, in part. They were written with the assistance of AI tools and edited by the author. Every chapter was revised against an editor's notes, and each full manuscript was checked for continuity and fact before release.
A fourth book is planned. Book Three ends with a hint of what it is about.
Begin with The Last Letter from Blackmere House. If you would rather try before you buy, ask for it at your library.
Start with Book One