A Long Fatal Love Chase

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A story of dark love and passionate obsession—considered “too sensational” to be published in the nineteenth century—from the beloved author of Little Women

“A deliciously readable page-turner.”—The New Yorker

“A suspenseful and thoroughly charming story . . . and it tends to confirm [Louisa May] Alcott’s position as the country’s most articulate nineteenth-century feminist.”—Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

“I’d gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom,” cries impetuous Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather.

Then, one stormy night, a brooding stranger appears in her remote island home, ready to take Rosamond to her word. Spellbound by the mysterious Philip Tempest, Rosamond is seduced with promises of love and freedom, then spirited away on Tempest’s sumptuous yacht. But she soon finds herself trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit.

Desperate to escape, she flees to Italy, France, and Germany, from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau, as Tempest stalks every step of the fiery beauty who has become his obsession.

A Long Fatal Love Chase was written for magazine serialization in 1866, two years before the publication of Little Women. Buried among Louisa May Alcott’s papers for more than a century, it is a literary landmark—a novel that is bold, timeless, and mesmerizing.