Carol Goodman Books In Order

Publication Order of Black Swan Rising Books

Publication Order of Blythewood Books

Publication Order of Fairwick Trilogy / Fairwick Chronicles Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Carol Goodman is an American professor and the author specializing in Gothic fiction. She has also written under the pseudonym Juliet Dark and Lee Carol with her beloved husband, Lee Smolinsky. Currently, she is a creative professor at the State University of New York. Carol Goodman became a published author in 2002 when The Lake of Dead Languages was published. Since Goodman has written over a dozen novels and four book series.

Carol’s book Blythewood set in 1911 was inspired by her daughter Maggie after she started a webcomic blog. According to an interview, the author admits that she majorly focuses on the themes of people haunted by their past, sometimes haunted by the frightening power of their imagination, and she also addresses the themes of people in the journey to find a place where they belong and the people they bond with.

In Blythewood, the main character is Avaline Hall who has grown up with a secretive mother hiding from her past. She is isolated from her social class as well as her family. Soon as her mother dies, she is on her own trying to survive in 1911 New York City and survives by working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
She continually hears bells in her head, and she is also afraid that she suffers from delusions and same melancholy just like her mother. She doesn’t know where she really belongs but when she discovers that magic exists she sets out to find the secrets of her mother’s past and where she perfectly belongs in the society.

The Lake of Dead Languages

Two decades ago, Jane Hudson fled from Heart Lake School for Girls after a terrible accident. Now she is back in the isolated shores of the school as a teacher, recently divorced and anticipating making a new beginning with her daughter. However threatening messages from her past uncover forgotten memories that will become Jane’s darkest nightmare.

Since her freshman year, she and her two friends Deirdre Hall and Lucy Toller were inseparable- studying classics, sneaking out to meet Lucy’s brother and performing some rituals on the lake. But on the last winter before graduation, things changed. On that ice-encrusted wonderland, three young lives were taken, all the victims of senseless suicide and Jane was the only one left to bear the burden of a puzzling mystery that has stayed buried for more than two decades in the depths of Heart Lake.
Now that she is back after twenty years, the pages from her missing diary written in that tragic period have resurfaced, revealing to the world the shocking and long-buried secrets. What’s even more threatening is that young and perturbed girls are dying again.

Sensuous, intelligent and compelling, The Lake of Dead Languages is a wonderful thriller, it’s a beautiful balance of fine storytelling and suspense that proves Carol Goodman is a gem in the literary world.

The Lake of Dead Languages is an eerie and gritty and the characters feel so real and vivid. The novel is set at a girl’s boarding school named Heart Lake. The school was built next to a big lake, Heart Lake and it was named after the lake. The lake holds many legends, that which are only whispered in the darkness, uttered in the dead of night or when around the campfire. These legends torment the girls who attend this school, and even though they have been deemed false, it does not take away the fear stored in the girls’ hearts.

The story is narrated from Jane Hudson’s point of view. She is a single mother and a Latin teacher at the “haunted” school where she studied twenty years ago. She is an “old girl” won a scholarship that she fought hard to win and has witnessed many horrors in her past and these horrors are resurfacing.

This is a story of strong friendship; it’s a story about friends who you would do anything for. It is mysterious, creepy and filled with suspense. There are lots of twists and surprises that will hook you to the last page. It is a gothic tale that will surely haunt you long after the first page. The main characters are primarily female even though there are a couple of male characters. There are some allusions to Roman and Greek mythology.

Arcadia Falls

Meg Rosenthal is gearing towards her next page in life. Driving along a wooded road, her car moves across a dense wood setting, one unlike those in the bedtime stories she used to tell her daughter Sally. The girl beside Meg Rosenthal is a teenager now and has exchanged the realm of make-believe for personal space and an iPod. Too much space and it appears that the rift between them has widened since the sudden death of Meg’s husband.

The financial constraints and the need to make a fresh start take Meg and her daughter Sally from the comfy life on Long Island to an upstate New York: Arcadia falls where Meg has accepted a job offer as a teacher at a local boarding school. The deserted cottage Meg and her daughter call home feel like a warning sign of things to come, but Meg is determined to make the best out of it and get approval from the school’s dean, Ivy St. Clare.

But Ivy seems distracted by some shocking crisis. During the school’s first night bonfire, one of Meg’s students is found dead. The local sheriff Callum finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then he is a man full of dark secrets himself. Meg is shocked by the local sheriff interest in the girl’s death, and as deeply buried secrets emerge she must confront her own demons as well as the danger threatening to engulf her daughter, Sally. As the past soon catches up with the present, the shadows grow longer and deadlier.

Just like The Lake of Dead Languages, Arcadia Falls and it’s narrated from Meg’s point of view. Very few writers are capable of creating an atmosphere as good as Goodman. Her writing is evocative, and you’ll find yourself simulating every event in the story. It is fast paced, with plenty of twists and turns to keep the readers hooked to the last page.