The Marilyn Ross renaissance is upon us

As long as there's loneliness, Marilyn Ross will never go out of style. Ross's books are made to be read alone in bed, preferably on cold, grey mornings. They're pure, undiluted escapism.

Ross was one of many pen names used by Dan Ross, a one-man gothic romance Gutenberg press. The sheer volume of his work was enough to land him in Guinness World Records. In about five years, Ross churned out 32 Dark Shadows novels, alone, before they ceased publication in 1972. (Among that number was the novelization of 1970's House of Dark Shadows.) That adds up to more than 5,100 pages.

Early in 2020, the Dark Shadows series will be going back into print. My source tells me the announcement is pending, but we can expect to see the classic Dark Shadows novels in print beginning in February. Hermes Press, the company that painstakingly restored the entire Dark Shadows comic series from Gold Key and the syndicated newspaper strip, is publishing them.



Earlier this year, the first round of audiobook adaptions of the Marilyn Ross novels went on sale. Read by Kathryn Leigh Scott, the first five books in the series -- Dark Shadows, Victoria Winters, Strangers at Collins House, The Mystery of Collinwood, The Curse of Collinwood, and Barnabas Collins -- are now available on Amazon. The availability of the CD version of these books remains unpredictable, but the entire line is available instantly through Audible.

Stay tuned for more details.