Bellwood

Twenty-three-year-old Caroline Brewster comes to a secluded estate on the Maine coast as companion to a five-year-old boy who is supposed to be retarded as well as crippled. Caro takes the job to help her forget a bitter experience, and the longer she stays in the beautiful other-worldly surroundings of Bellwood the more deeply she falls in love with her employer, a man like no other she has known.

Rees Morgan's self-imposed isolation after a great personal tragedy is understandable to Caro. He has reasonable explanations for his child's brightness and alertness, and can also account logically for the voices that Caro hears in an empty house. Dazzled and adoring, she questions nothing.

Caro also meets Eric, an engaging summer sailor, whom she is inclined to ignore. But when by sheer accident she discovers Rees's "other face" and learns a horrifying tale of revenge, she turns to Eric to save her from the fatal consequences of her new knowledge.

In this great suspense novel Elisabeth Ogilvie has stunningly evoked the atmosphere of the Maine coast as a backdrop for a spell-binding Gothic romance.