The Chase: Louisa May Alcott

Rosamond Vivien has been brought up as a recluse on a remote island off the English coast, and has often thought that she would gladly sell her soul to Satan for a year of freedom. When Phillip Tempest - charming, handsome and almost twice her age - mysteriously appears one stormy night, Rosamond is willing to pay for her pleasure, if necessary. But nothing can prepare her for the life that Tempest will lure her into sharing with him. Instead of the freedom she craves, Rosamond is caught up in the strange past of her new husband. Terrified of him and all he represents, she flees and so the chase begins: from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau But Tempest allows nothing to escape from him and Rosamond is his obsession. Alcott was best known for her Little Women series and other tales of a morally uplifting and spiritual nature...but here she takes a leap into the genre of the Gothic and the macabre. The Chase was regarded, at the time of writing, to be too sensational to print.