Published in 2025
353 pages
12 hours and 2 minutes
Christina Li is the award-winning author of children’s and young adult books Clues to the Universe, Ruby Lost and Found, and True Love and Other Impossible Odds, which have been selected as a Washington Post summer book club pick, one of the NPR and New York Public Library Best Books of the Year, and recognized for the Asian Pacific American Librarians’ Award for Best Children’s Literature. She graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Economics and Public Policy. She grew up in the Midwest and California, but now resides in New York. The Manor of Dreams is her adult literary debut.
What is this book about?
At night, the garden comes alive… Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in Christina Li’s completely addictive and beautifully haunting gothic page-turner.
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. The rest of her life was shrouded in mystery…
Now, her daughters gather for the reading of her will. They expect to inherit their childhood home: a grand Southern California manor house with a sprawling, labyrinthine garden. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead. The two families haven’t seen each other 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 race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, they soon discover they are being haunted by something far more sinister and vengeful than just their memories.
After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the truth behind the house’s origins and the last, tragic summer they spent there? Or will the manor of dreams – and its deadly secrets – finally lay claim to its owners?
