Nightfall

by Dorothy Daniels

On the soft summer night of a lavish dinner and ball, one of the plantation's barns was set ablaze and destroyed. A warning, perhaps, of worse to come? Then the master of the household was dead, impaled on his own rapier. And his 19-year-old twin daughters were left orphans, facing a future that would bring them danger, misunderstanding, and love ... a future complicated by the venomous hatred of a woman who would stop at nothing, not even murder, to gain possession of the plantation and destroy the twin heiresses.

Genres: Gothic

312 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1976

About the author

According to a mini-biography, accompanied by a photograph, on the rear cover of one of her many gothic novels, Dorothy Daniels was born in Connecticut but by the time she was a full-time writer, in the middle 1960's, was living in California. She was initially an English teacher at a state college but later wrote articles that appeared in national magazines, which led to her career as a writer of mostly gothic paperbacks. Lancer books, which published more than twenty of her novels, proclaimed her "America's Most Popular Gothic Novelist" while Pocket Books claimed her gothic novels had sold over eleven million copies by the middle 1970's. Her approximately 146 novels were published by a dozen paperback publishers, some had as many as four printings while others were printed only once. Lancer and Warner Books together published more than sixty of her novels. The vast majority of her novels were written in the first person and this was a trademark of sorts with Dorothy Daniels, as she rarely strayed from this pattern. Several of her novels take place in the Old South. Her novels were also considerably more involving plot-wise and contained more character development than other gothic novels. She published her last gothic novel, "House of Silence", in late 1980. Afterward she wrote a handfull of historical romances and her last published novel appears to be "Crisis at Valcour" in 1985.
The aforementioned photograph on the rear cover of her 1965 book "Cliffside Castle" contradicts some claims that Dorothy Daniels was male, and at least one internet website's author insists that Dorothy Daniels was actually a man named Paul Hugo Little who lived in Chicago and wrote over 700 books under at least a dozen pseudonyms. We may never know for certain who Dorothy Daniels was. Several of her gothic paperbacks, credited to Dorothy Daniels or Suzanne Somers, were copyrighted by Norman Daniels. She published one novel, "House of False Faces", under the pseudonym Helen Gray Weston, but this book was later reissued as "Dorothy Daniels writing as Helen Gray Weston". She wrote three nurse romance books in addition to her many gothic novels.

Also wrote under the names:
Angela Gray
Cynthia Kavanaugh
Helaine Ross
Suzanne Somers
Geraldine Thayer
Helen Gray Weston

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gothic read enticed me from the start and I have re-read it tons of times since. This book made me want to read everything this author wrote.

[Anne Schmidt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually had fail expectations about this novel.