Thunder Heights

Camilla King has grown up with almost no knowledge of her father's side of the family, and he made sure she never met them. That changes when her grandfather, Orrin Judd, a fabulously rich man in failing health, summons her to Thunder Heights, a decaying mansion above the Hudson River. It is the place where her mother died in unexplained circumstances. Camilla goes partly from curiosity about the relatives she never knew and partly because rumors of an inheritance have reached her. The household she enters is hostile. Her grandfather is a harsh, domineering man. Two frail, ghostly aunts seem worn down by a grief no one will name. A charming drifter lives comfortably off the Judd money, and a stiff, distrustful aide watches everything. Soon a run of accidents strikes Camilla, and she begins to suspect that she has been lured into a trap like the one that caught her mother years earlier. Phyllis A. Whitney was a prolific American author best known for Gothic suspense novels.