Welcome to The American Gothic Collection. Julia Whitlock writes atmospheric novels of mystery and memory, set in America’s past among lakeshore mansions, island lighthouses, and the people who keep their secrets.

Book cover for “The Cartographer’s Widow” by Julia Whitlock, featuring Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, at sunset with a historic map, lakeside homes, and dramatic clouds.

Geneva Lake, 1895. A cartographer’s widow comes to finish the boundary survey that killed her husband, and finds the filed map is a lie, the stolen ground is worth killing for, and the only witness left is the earth itself.

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Book cover for “The Keeper’s House” by Julia Whitlock, depicting a lighthouse, coastal keeper’s cottage, docked sailboat, rocky shoreline, stormy sunset, and map of Storrow Island.
Book cover for “The Keeper’s House” by Julia Whitlock, depicting a lighthouse, coastal keeper’s cottage, docked sailboat, rocky shoreline, stormy sunset, and map of Storrow Island.

Maine, 1876. A schoolmaster’s orphaned daughter takes a housekeeper’s post at an island light station and finds a silent child, a widowed keeper who will not answer a plain question, and provisions that go somewhere she is never shown.

Coming November 2026

by Julia Whitlock, featuring a haunted Southern mansion and overgrown garden gate beneath a map of the Mississippi River.

Mississippi, 1905. On a river plantation gone to ruin, one garden is still tended. Everything in it is beautiful. Everything in it is poison.

Coming soon