Ghosts and Shadows Books in Order

Ghosts and Shadows is a short, tightly linked gothic horror series that follows Sophie Argenton as she’s pulled into a family, and a house, with teeth. The books lean into old-money secrets, locked rooms, and the kind of isolation that turns every corridor into a threat.

In House of Shadows, Sophie’s life changes abruptly when disaster leaves her family facing ruin. A wealthy stranger, Joseph Argenton, offers a marriage that would solve the immediate problem, but the price is moving far from everything she knows. Northwood, the Argenton estate, sits hours from civilization and seems to swallow light. It’s a place where silence feels deliberate, and where Sophie can never quite tell if she’s being watched by the living or the dead.

Sophie arrives as an outsider and quickly realizes she’s stepped into a family that has learned to keep its history buried. Joseph is guarded, his relatives are cold, and the house itself behaves like a character, slamming doors and making music at the wrong hour. Strange figures move at the edge of the woods. Shadows gather where they shouldn’t. Worse, Joseph’s young cousin Elise begins producing disturbing drawings, as if she’s seeing something that the adults refuse to name.

Northwood does not want new people.

The second book, House of Secrets, begins with Sophie and Joseph trying to outrun what happened at Northwood, only to learn that some evils travel light. When the sinister force latches onto Elise, they’re drawn to Kensington, a long-abandoned mansion that overlooks a dead town. Kensington offers a shred of hope: its original owner spent her life researching the monster now haunting the family, and her work might explain how to kill it without harming the girl. But the building is a trap. Once the carriage leaves, they’re stranded inside collapsing walls, stalked by shrouded figures and whispers, with unmarked graves dotting the grounds and the dead refusing to stay quiet.

Across both books, the tension comes from a mix of classic haunted-house set pieces and the slow, uneasy work of trust. Sophie and Joseph are trying to understand each other while also trying to survive the night, and the story keeps the focus on immediate danger rather than deep mythology. The two books read like one long nightmare, with the pressure rising instead of resetting. Expect vivid house horror, a dash of gothic romance, and a clear two-book arc that’s best read in order from House of Shadows to House of Secrets.