Prologue

In the 1780s, ambitious shipbuilder Arthur Poole settles on Maine’s coast, marries advantageously, and grows both a flourishing business and a grand manor overlooking Poole’s Bay. He envisions a lasting legacy, celebrating his children and anticipating the wedding of his son Collin to Astrid Grandville for love, not gain.

Hester Dobbs, a mad witch coveting the manor, murders Arthur by magical means, disguising it as a riding accident. When this fails to win her the house, Hester escalates: she slays Astrid on her wedding day, steals Astrid’s ring, and lays a blood-bound curse that a Poole bride in every generation will die by her hand.

Hester seals the curse on a moonlit night at three o’clock, then leaps from the seawall into the sea. Across more than two centuries, the manor endures births and deaths as each generation suffers one doomed bride. Seven brides perish, and Hester claims seven rings, while spirits—victims and others—remain within the house.

In modern times, Sonya MacTavish, unaware of her Poole blood or of her father’s separated twin, comes to the manor seeking her family’s history and answers to eerie artistic premonitions. Drawn to a predatory-framed mirror, Sonya steps through, witnesses the seven murders, and recognizes the stolen rings as the key to ending the curse.

Resolved by grief and duty, Sonya vows to stay in the haunted manor, recover the seven rings, and banish Hester Dobbs for good, committing to hunt and fight even as death stirs around her.