Books by Isadora Vale

Isadora Vale writes atmospheric gothic fiction exploring the dark undercurrents of family legacy and ancestral secrets. Her haunting prose examines how the past refuses to stay buried, particularly within the decaying walls of old family estates where blood ties bind as tightly as they corrupt.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Vale grew up surrounded by her grandmother's stories of their own family's mysterious history—tales that would later inspire her fascination with generational trauma and the weight of inherited guilt. She studied comparative literature at Vassar College, where she wrote her senior thesis on the Gothic tradition in American family sagas, from Hawthorne to Shirley Jackson.

After graduating, Vale spent several years working as an archivist for historical societies throughout New England, a position that gave her intimate access to the private papers and hidden histories of old American families. It was during this time, sifting through centuries-old journals and correspondence in dusty estate libraries, that she began crafting the stories that would define her literary voice.

Her debut novel, The Bloodline Covenant, draws directly from this experience—the discovery of family secrets hidden in plain sight, waiting in forgotten journals and locked drawers. The novel explores themes of inherited shame, the price of family loyalty, and the terrible burden of being the last to carry a name that has lost all meaning except its capacity for destruction.

Vale currently lives in a restored 19th-century farmhouse in rural Vermont, where she tends an extensive garden of heirloom roses and continues to unearth the stories that families try hardest to forget. She is at work on her second novel, which delves deeper into the psychological cost of carrying forward a legacy built on lies.

"Every family has its secrets," Vale has said in interviews. "I'm interested in what happens when those secrets finally demand their due."