Immersive Historical

Fiction

Acclaimed Novels by Robert Brighton

 

The Phantom of Forest Lawn:

Romance and Redemption in the City of the Dead

 

From acclaimed author Robert Brighton comes a sweeping saga of passion, mystery, honor, and intrigue in "an epic in miniature" which combines Gothic romance, resurrection of the dead, and unrequited love into a dazzling unity that even death itself cannot put asunder.

This "achingly beautiful story" with compelling clues and buried secrets will prove irresistible to uncover.

 

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Shop for blackwing pencils and notebooks, signed and inscribed novels from the author’s library, specialty merchandise and other items and collaborations available exclusively here on Robert’s site.

 

Shop in our brand new online store, an emporium where you'll find merchandise not available elsewhere.

You’ll be the first to find exclusive and long-planned offerings that are the highest quality, the most beautiful, and the most useful products anywhere.

We are featuring signed hardcover copies of Robert's novels (with an inscription if you choose), custom pencils and notebooks, drinkware, home goods, and other custom products from select collaborations.

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The Buffalo Butcher

Jack the Ripper in the Electric City

 

Named BookLife Reviews Editor’s Pick

” . . . deftly blends the fascinations of the period setting with unpredictability, suspense, and horror . . . Brighton’s well-grounded, frank, and incisive prose shows the truth of sexual trafficking at the dawn of the twentieth century . . . at its core lies these women’s drives to save their dignity, and each other, to their last breath, in the name of love . . .”

Summer 1901, and the great Pan-American Exposition welcomes the world to Buffalo, New York—Queen of the Lakes. Eight million visitors throng the bustling boomtown—all of them looking for a good time.

As heat and swarming crowds choke the city, the bodies of prostitutes begin turning up, slashed and mutilated by a pitiless hand—their flesh carved with strange symbols.

Some say the killings are the work of the Devil himself. Others hint that the Whitechapel Murderer, Jack the Ripper, has crossed the Atlantic to resume his bloody career. Yet the city’s power brokers—afraid of any publicity that would harm the Exposition—turn a blind eye to the victims. They’re only whores, after all . . .

As the bloody summer wears on, only one thing is clear: it’ll be up to the working girls themselves to stop the carnage. And in The Buffalo Butcher, five of them will stand together to confront the killer . . . and to reclaim their humanity.

An important novel by Robert Brighton, acclaimed author of the Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries.

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The Unsealing Audiobook

New!

You’ve loved The Unsealing (thank you!) and it’s now available by popular demand as an audiobook.  

If you haven’t been able to find enough quiet time to READ The Unsealing, as of today you can now LISTEN to it.

Several months ago—after quite a few requests for an audio format of the book—I went into the recording studio to read the whole novel, cover to cover, for your listening pleasure.

The AUDIOBOOK of The Unsealing is available to stream or download at all of the usual places: Apple Books, Audible, Audiobooks.com, Barnes & Noble, Libro.fm, Libby/Overdrive, Spotify, and many more not listed here (I don’t want to leave anyone out, but time and space are finite!).

Should you choose to favor me with your custom, I can promise you a good story competently read by its author.

On The Blog

NOTES FROM ROBERT BRIGHTON

Requiem Aeternam

Mozart and Behind the Scenes of the Official Trailer for The Phantom of Forest Lawn

9/11/2024

A number of readers have asked me about the haunting score that accompanies the new Theatrical Trailer for The Phantom of Forest Lawn. Well, it's part of the 'Introitus: Requiem Aeternam' movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's great Requiem in D Minor, K.626, the master's final work. It's a magnificent piece of music, and the thought that Mozart wrote a Requiem Mass for the Dead while on his own deathbed makes it especially moving.

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It Was a Colorful World

6/26/2024

We all grow accustomed to seeing the past (at least pre-1950) in black and white. I don’t mean this (only) metaphorically—I’m referring to the monochromatic and chiaroscuro tints of black-and-white photography. Of course we all know that the world of the past wasn’t black and white—it was as colorful as today is. And there is a marked difference in our emotional reaction to the somewhat cold images of black-and-white film than there is to the more ‘realistic’ images taken with color film. Black-and-white images seem somehow distant and very still, while color images seem immediate and brimming with life.

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Drive It Like You Stole It

4/18/2024

When I was in college, I worked summers at National Car Rental—cleaning up cars, changing oil, whatever needed doing. It was a great job, and taught me to be handy with tools and such. And it also taught me that people are hard—really hard—on rental cars. A friend of mine in those days told me that the car renter’s motto should be ‘drive it like you stole it’. ​It’s true of rental cars, and—yep, you guessed it—it’s true of life too.

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