Immersive Historical
Fiction
Acclaimed Novels by Robert Brighton
The Phantom of Forest Lawn:
Romance and Redemption in the City of the Dead
Sometimes death is not the end.
From acclaimed author Robert Brighton comes an "achingly beautiful story" with compelling clues and buried secrets that prove irresistible to uncover.
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For Gilded Age quality at Bronze Age prices, look no further!
Gilded Age Nuggets
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The Phantom of Forest Lawn -
Available Now!
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.
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.
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On The Blog
NOTES FROM ROBERT BRIGHTON
New Weekly Column - Secrets of the Gilded Age
9/16/2024
Hello all—I’m Robert Brighton. I’m a novelist and native Buffalonian—born on a full-moon night at Buffalo General—and I grew up in Tonawanda and Grand Island. Then, much to my dismay, I had to leave Western New York—though, as Tony Bennett ought to have sung, ‘I left my heart in Erie County’. Even if there aren’t a lot of hills. But now (thanks to Buffalo Rising) I will be back in my beloved hometown every week, sharing with you some very obscure and very fascinating findings from my years of research into Buffalo’s past. And I will bet you a Paula’s donut or a Ted’s hot dog that these are people, places, and things that even Buffalo Rising’s very knowledgeable readers have never seen or heard of before.
READ MORERequiem 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.
READ MOREIt 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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