Histria Books is pleased to announce the release of The Waters of Hercules by Emily and Dorothea Gerard. This compelling work of historical fiction is published by Addison & Highsmith Publishers, an imprint of Histria Books dedicated to outstanding original works of fiction.
The long-forgotten novel that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The heroine of the story, Gretchen, is a practical-minded German girl, who considers marriage an economic proposition and is determined to marry a man of wealth.
When Gretchen’s father is seriously injured in an accident, the family sets off to Transylvania, to the Baths of Hercules, in hopes that the waters of Hercules, known for their curative powers, will rehabilitate him. Her father tells Gretchen of a mysterious place in the surrounding forest, known as Gaura Dracului (the Devil’s Pit) and legends of a treasure associated with it inspire Gretchen to consider another way to make her fortune, so that she can marry any man of her choosing.
Written by sisters Emily and Dorothea Gerard, The Water of Hercules is a Victorian novel, filled with Gothic suspense.
This beautiful edition, with original illustrations by acclaimed artist Phoebe Cho, should be of great interest to all fans of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With an introduction by A.K. Brackob, a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe, The Waters of Hercules is sure to entertain and delight.
Emily Gerard was a Scottish 19th-century author best known for the influence her collections of Transylvanian folklore had on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. She wrote stories for Blackwood’s Magazine, as well as reviewing French and German literature for The Times, and Blackwood’s. Dorothea Gerard was a Scottish-born novelist and romance writer who often wrote about controversial and unconventional subjects and “whose general conservatism co-existed with a piercing eye for relations across national and ethnic divides, for antisemitism and other forms of prejudice.”
