The Manor of Dreams
On sale
7th May 2026
Price: £10.99
They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But they’re wrong. Silence can be deadly.
Vivian Yin is dead. The trailblazing starlet was the first Chinese actress to win an Oscar - but at what should have been the peak of her career, she became a recluse, her life shrouded in mystery.
Now, her daughters, Lucille and Renata, and her granddaughter, Lily, are gathered for the reading of her will, expecting to inherit the sprawling California garden estate Vivian hadn’t left in years.
Instead, thanks to a last-minute change to her will, the house is passed on to someone else: Elaine Deng and her daughter Nora. Lucille and Renata are shocked – they haven’t spoken to Elaine for decades. Not since the tragedy that fractured all of their lives.
Vying for the estate, both families move into the crumbling, vine-covered manor. As Vivian’s daughters sift through the remnants of her life looking for clues about her death, they discover they are being haunted by something far more sinister than their memories…
Will the families uncover the truth before it’s too late to save the next generation? Or will the manor of dreams – and its deadly secrets – finally lay claim to its owners?
The Manor of Dreams is full to the brim with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice; an addictive page-turner that examines how families pass down the cost of silence. This atmospheric gothic page-turner is Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Vivian Yin is dead. The trailblazing starlet was the first Chinese actress to win an Oscar - but at what should have been the peak of her career, she became a recluse, her life shrouded in mystery.
Now, her daughters, Lucille and Renata, and her granddaughter, Lily, are gathered for the reading of her will, expecting to inherit the sprawling California garden estate Vivian hadn’t left in years.
Instead, thanks to a last-minute change to her will, the house is passed on to someone else: Elaine Deng and her daughter Nora. Lucille and Renata are shocked – they haven’t spoken to Elaine for decades. Not since the tragedy that fractured all of their lives.
Vying for the estate, both families move into the crumbling, vine-covered manor. As Vivian’s daughters sift through the remnants of her life looking for clues about her death, they discover they are being haunted by something far more sinister than their memories…
Will the families uncover the truth before it’s too late to save the next generation? Or will the manor of dreams – and its deadly secrets – finally lay claim to its owners?
The Manor of Dreams is full to the brim with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice; an addictive page-turner that examines how families pass down the cost of silence. This atmospheric gothic page-turner is Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
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Reviews
The Manor of Dreams peels back the promises of the American Dream to reveal something more painful, more heartbreaking, and ultimately, more true. An ambitious, evocative meditation on the hurts passed down across generations - and how we heal
A true modern classic. The Manor of Dreams is beautiful, eerie and woven with enough intrigue to hold all who enter captive. Christina Li remains unmatched in breathing characters to life - and the hauntings thereafter
The Manor of Dreams is a bejeweled puzzle box to unlock.
An atmospheric thriller that tackles what some people must pay for the great American dream.
A lushly crafted haunted house gothic, full of family secrets and forbidden romance and grounded in Hollywood's long history of racism and patriarchy.
Richly imagined... Fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic ought to take note of this beautiful and haunting novel.
Packed with gothic plot, gushing blood, choking clods of dirt, and angry ghosts-a smorgasbord for devotees.
Christina Li has woven together the struggles of immigration, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, the resentments between upstairs-downstairs "friends," and the glitz and disappointments of Hollywood to create a clever, unexpected, and lush ghost story. I curled up with The Manor of Dreams and read it over a single weekend.
Haunting, tender, and intoxicating. Written with gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters, Li's gothic adult debut will leave you devastated until the very end, and then long after you've put the book down.
You know that feeling when you watch the first episode of a streaming series and instantly know you're going to binge the whole thing? That's exactly how you'll feel after reading the first chapter of this book. A part of you-a very delighted part-will immediately think, "Cancel all my plans; I'm devouring this in one sitting." And that's exactly what I did. Deliciously eerie, culturally vibrant, and historically profound-The Manor of Dreams is a dark pleasure.