Once Upon a Gothic Giveaway: The Last Bride

By the bestselling author of The Devil and Mrs. Davenport and The Artist of Blackberry Grange.

The Last Bride is a tale of sacrifice, feminine agency, and resilience against impossible odds, set in the same darkly beautiful world Stoker imagined over a century ago. Before Mina and Lucy, there was Ileana, Dracula's last bride. Cloistered in Dracula's mountainside castle, Ileana and her sister vampires lead a sheltered existence. But when Dracula's ambitions take him across the sea to England, Ileana experiences an unexpected awakening of long-dormant desires when she befriends a village midwife and healer who believes she can reverse Ileana's vampirism. Read first chapter (pdf).

The Last Bride book includes full text of Dracula by Bram Stoker in Tête-Bêche format. How Tête-Bêche works: flip the book one way and you'll be reading The Last Bride; flip the other way to read Dracula.

Giveaway ends September 1, 2025 and limited to one entry per person. Good luck to all who enter!

Coming this Fall from Kickstarter

The Once Upon a Gothic series: four exclusive books containing original retellings by four bestselling authors accompanied by the classic gothic novels that inspired them.

Dracula by Bram Stoker • The Last Bride by Paulette Kennedy
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley • Unnatural Creatures by Kris Waldherr
Phantom of the Opera by Gustav Leroux • The Phantom's Apprentice by Heather Webb
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen • The Heiress of Northanger Abbey by Nancy Bilyeau

View on Kickstarter