Synopsis: The isolated mansion hiding dark secrets and a lonely heart. The castle with grief and love permeating its walls and influencing its guests. LOVE AMONG THE THORNS presents eleven contemporary Gothic/paranormal romances with the flavor of the classic Gothics of the 70s and 80s – locations and lives shrouded in solitude and secrecy, mired in mist and mystery, and where the spark of true love grows from the smallest candle flickering in the wind into a fierce light that drives back the darkness. These eleven authors looked beyond the traditional wind-rattled Victorian mansions and stately plantation houses shrouded in moss to introduce us to contemporary Gothic locations hiding in plain sight. In LOVE AMONG THE THORNS, the fog and forests of the Pacific Northwest cloud your vision, before blowing away to reveal the wind-swept plains of Montana. The damp of the Louisiana bayou gives way to the glittering lights of Manhattan. Across the ocean, secrets lie behind the walls of grand estates in the forests of Germany and the windy crags of Scotland, and danger lurks beneath the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean. In each locale, the sense of things not being quite right, not quite what they seem on the surface beckons you forward. Whatever the setting or obstacles placed before the lovers, the stories in LOVE AMONG THE THORNS focus on the relationships that develop between the characters, bringing them from strangers – or even antagonists – to the point where they leave the story hand-in-hand, with futures possible only because of the hardships they had to overcome to achieve them.