Order the eBook and paperback here! Released April 21st, 2025. This is Ivy Grimes’ debut novel.
Ruby is almost happy with her secluded life deep in the forest with her mother and sister Opal. But when her mother gets sick, Ruby decides to provide for her family the only way she knows how: by marrying the enigmatic owner of a bizarre mansion, and dutifully serving as hostess to his strange parties. There’s just one problem: what happened to all his previous wives? The answer is stranger than Ruby could have imagined…
“If you ever wished Kurt Vonnegut and Karen Russell had written a quirky gothic ghost story about complicated histories, family secrets, maze-like mansions, alchemy, and talking possums, then this is the book for you! A fun romp all the way through!”
—Corey Farrenkopf, author of Living in Cemeteries
“The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion is somehow as disturbing as it is delightful. An American Bluebeard on shrooms. Ivy Grimes writes with the wry humor of Brautigan and the dream-like disconnectedness of Murakami and always brings something new to the table. You will get sucked right into this strangely familiar or familiarly strange culty community, where two sisters confront and untangle a poisonous local history. It’s a surreal Southern Gothic with one part tender character work and two parts uh oh what the hell was that, and you’re not going to read anything else quite like it.”
—Thomas Ha
“The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion expertly blends a fairytale atmosphere with contemporary dread and philosophy to create an unforgettable tale. With whimsical anachronisms alongside dashes of magic, humor, and of course glass, this is much more than a reimagining of Bluebeard, but a thought-provoking dissection of identity, loyalty, and love.”
—Emma E. Murray, author of Crushing Snails
The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion takes you into its fold of rural castles, child-prophets, and ornery spirits with the graceful weirdness of modern folklore. Disarming, fully-realized, and without compromise, Ivy Grimes continues to bludgeon genre constraints and expectations in this barn-burning debut novel.”
—Matthew Mitchell, author of Chaindevils
Illuminated by fantastical and surreal imagery, with bizarre (and often surprising) turns of event, The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion is a beautiful chimera of fiction, both familiar and somehow entirely unique. Ivy Grimes’ work cannot be categorized, and furthermore, shouldn’t be—it is its own radiant, hybrid thing, free from constraints of genre or expectation, and is all the more radiant for it.
—TJ Price, author of The Disappearance of Tom Nero