Author Information
Phyllis A. Whitney's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    73 Books
  • First Book:
    January 1943
  • Latest Book:
    July 1997
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About the Author

For more than 80 years, Phyllis A. Whitney wove her storytelling magic—in her lifetime garnering numerous awards and worldwide acclaim for her books. A winner of the prestigious Grand Master award for lifetime achievement from the Mystery Writers of America, and an author the New York Times once called the "Queen of the American Gothics," Phyllis A. Whitney was one of the world's most beloved mystery and romantic suspense writers. Whitney passed away on February 8, 2008 at the age of 104.

Book List in Order: 73 titles



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    How does it feel to be in a big department store after customers have hurried home and the lights have been darkened so that eeriness reigns over the vast reaches of the floors? To Linell Wynn, who writes sign copy for Cunninghams', such a scene ...



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Jobs were scarce in Poplar City. Ann Redfern had ideas -- many of her friends had talent, unused, apparently unwanted talent. With Ann as their leader, and with the reluctant aid of Mr. Kildare, owner of the Poplar City Star, the young people pooled ...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    Abbie Garrett, growing up on Staten Island during the war between North and South, found herself in the midst of an explosive situation. Her mother was a Southern woman, divided in allegiance; her father hated war, though he felt the North was right....



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    SHE CAME LOOKING FOR THE FUTURE SHE HAD ALWAYS WANTED... AND THE PAST SHE NEVER KNEW When lovely young Sara Jerome moves to San Francisco, she is filled with anticipation. Not only does the man she has loved since childhood live there, but her fat...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    Never had a man been so wrong for a woman...and never had a woman wanted a man so... In the sultry heat of a New Orleans summer, Skye Cameron sees Justin Law for the first time and knows immediately that she will either love him or hate him--no woma...



  • With its black eyes, the creature looks at the four children, mysteriously wise, mysteriously alive...." What is the secret of the green cat? Why does it mean so much to the strange people who live next door? Why is the old baroness kept a ...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    When Jerome Talbot's brilliant scientific career led him to Japan, his wife, Marcia, knew it meant a long separation for them. But she confidently awaited word to join him and when, instead, she received his letter asking for a divorce, the news came...



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    It's a case of haunts along the Hudson in this spine-tingler by a master maker of tingles for the younger set. Leaving her family in New York at the start of the summer vacation, Susan Price comes up the river to the little town of Highland Cross...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    AMID THE LUSH BEAUTY OF AFRICA, INTRIGUE AND BETRAYAL LAY WAITING. When Susan returns to her homeland of South Africa as the wife of Dirk Hohenfield, her childhood sweetheart, she is both excited by her new life and apprehensive about stirring up ...






    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    THE SCENE IS NEW YORK CITY IN THE 1870's. A letter summons young Megan Kincaid to the house on Washington Square. In a startling interview the master of the house, Brandon Reid, informs her that he wishes her to devote herself to moody, unbalanced Je...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    The Greek island of Rhodes, to which Dorcas Brandt flees in hope of escaping the strange incidents that have beset her since the death of her husband, Gino, in an airplane crash. She suspects that those who worked with Gino in his mysterious and illi...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    As the carriage approached Bascomb's Point, Miranda Heath's gay spirit of adventure waivered under the combined onslaught of the raging storm and the shadowy outline of the gloomy, mysterious old house ahead. She shivered as she remembered her father...



  • To Tracy Hubbard, at home in New York, a masquerade had seemed the only possible way to track down the answer to a tragedy for which she felt partly responsible. But now that she was in Istanbul, an impostor in the exotic household of Sylvana Erim, T...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    That was a night of gold and red, with torches flaming on the hilltop and the lights of Charlotte Amalie fanning out around the harbor below. A night of water lily and sweet-smelling cereus. The night of the shell... Jessica Abbott, fleeing her own...



  • SILVERHILL-a gray ghost of a house brooding among its white birch trees, which seems to Mallie Rice haunted by evil reflections from the past. In its Hall of Mirrors even her cousin Gerald Gorham, curator of the fabulous Gorham collection of treasure...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    "The nightmare was one from which I could not waken. I was caught upon a chessboard, a helpless pawn in a game of life and death, and the green rook was hunting me. That tall rook of green-black yew who had it in his power to destroy the king and end...



  • From her first glimpse of Glen Chandler, young Dina Blake was enchanted. Their courtship was swift, passionate, and filled with the kind of excitement Dina never knew existed. She was certain their marriage would last forever... until he brought h...



  • THE OTHER WOMAN IN GILES SEVERN'S LIFE IS MARRIED TO HIM Lacey, Elise, and Giles. They grew up together on a mist-shrouded island off the Georgia coast. Long ago, and without Giles ever knowing it, Lacey gave birth to his son. Bit Elise, the beau...



  • Joan had thought that it would be wonderful to live on Rainbow Island, the fantastic children's amusement park her uncle had built. When she and her mother move there Joan is sure she will be a new person among the bright, multicolored structures...






  • When Linda Hollis' widowed mother remarries, Linda has to move to a small town to live with her new stepfather and his kids, who aren't at all nice to her. And to move to a small town after living in the apex of wonder, Manhattan? Linda has t...



  • Leigh's father was a famed novelist and her mother, a great actress of Hollywood's golden age. But they never married. Leigh grew up without knowing her real mother-viewing the distant, romantic figure with bitterness and resentment. Her father's dea...



  • Eager to clear her step-brother of a murder charge, Linda Earle comes to a snow-covered ski resort in the Northeast, where she finds herself in a unique world of icy weather and fiery passions. In this new novel of romantic suspense Phyllis A. Whitne...



  • On the eighteenth of April in 1906 a violent earthquake shook San Francisco. The fires that followed turned the city into a burning, smoky nightmare. That was the day Melora Cranby returned from Chicago. Unaware of the crisis ahead, her thoughts were...



  • "FROM THE TIME I WAS VERY YOUNG, I HAD SENSED SOME HORROR ABOUT MY MOTHERS DEATH--SOME DEVASTATING TRUTH NO ONE WANTED ME TO KNOW" Something hidden deep in her memory was the key to Amanda Austin's 'past. She did not know it was also the key to he...



  • Taffy Saunders finds mystery and adventure on beautiful Mackinac Island, where her mother has unexpectedly inherited a hotel. A stipulation in the will states that Mrs. Saunders must manage the hotel successfully for a summer in order to gain title t...



  • While her father, a bridge builder, is working in Portugal, Wendy Williams goes to the Virgin Islands to live with distant cousins. On her arrival she is puzzled and disappointed to find no one is there to meet her. What could have happened? A friend...



  • Trina has always thought it rather romantic to have a black sheep in the family. Forty years ago her Great-uncle Will Horst robbed a bank in a little town in New Hampshire. And now Trina is spending the summer there with friends of her parents, the f...



  • THE RIDDLE OF THE ROCKS -- When her parents flew off to Europe, leaving Marcie behind, she was sure she would have a miserable summer. But that was before she met Timothy Rainbow. With Timothy around there was always excitement. Timothy knew spec...



  • “It was quite true, you couldn’t go back…because life itself went ahead. You outgrew one relationship, but you grew into another that might be even more important. That was what was beginning now, and Tom was a part of it. They both had so muc...






  • Imagine being so lucky! When Jan goes to spend the Christmas holidays with her grandparents in their chalet near the ski slopes in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains she discovers that her favorite movie star, Alanna Graham, is visiting next door! ...



  • Inside the wall of a palatial Newport estate, a violent struggle was beginning. Christy Moreland had come back to Spindrift determined to uncover the truth behind the mansion's most tightly held secret: the reason for her father's death. It was a t...



  • Valerie Coleman--good at sports, bright and a super writer--a cinch to become editor of the school paper. Stephen Reid-- quiet son of famous parents-a "good guy" in his own right. Judy Piper--pert and pretty redhead, throwing herself into things with...



  • When Angie and Mark first look at the treasure map given them by the old prospector, they are unable to figure out its meaning or even decide whether or not it is a hoax. But when they persuade their parents to visit the ghost town of Blossom, one cl...



  • Lisa came to the city looking for a career -- and found the magic of romance... "WHO AM I?" is a hard question to answer when you're living in the shadow of a famous newscaster. No matter how pretty and intelligent you are, you're still just you...



  • THE DISAPPEARING ROADRUNNER was the first thing stolen at the Haunted Mesa Ranch. Jenny Manford and her friend Greg soon stumbled on the culprit…and Indian boy, who tossed Jenny’s wooden roadrunner at them and escaped. With her carving back, Jen...



  • "I don't see how we can pretend she's invisible," Debra whispered. " "That's hard to do." "Of course we can!" insisted Melissa. Hanging back unhappily behind the group of girls who are teasing sullen Trin...



  • Don't try to find out who you are, Courtney. You may uncover horrors you're better off not knowing. Be satisfied with the loving parents who raised you. Let the door stay closed.... On the southern shore of Long Island, in a foreboding East Hampton...



  • CAMILLA WAS YOUNG, SPIRITED, BEAUTIFUL... JUST LIKE HER MOTHER, ALTHEA. WAS THE GIRL DESTINED TO SHARE THE SAME STRANGE FATE? In this gripping novel, one of today top writers of romantic suspense weaves a tense and moving story of intrigue and ...



  • "I am never free of Ariel's shadow." All her life, Jenny Vaughn had lived in the shadow of Ariel, the graceful, enchanting prima ballerina whose art had become legend. But suddenly Ariel was gone, and Jenny's ordinary life as a teacher was transforme...






  • The stone face glared from its mountain perch. What was it trying to say? At first that tall column of rock seemed no different from others near the Mountain House. Then Jo noticed the face with wide, staring eyes and angry brows that had been car...



  • Laure Beaudine is the daughter of Jules Beaudine, a famous Shakespearean actor of the 90's. Her mother died when she was small, and she has been raised by her mother's sister, Aunt Judith, an extremely strict person who hates everything to do with th...



  • "If anything happens to me down here, don't let it pass as an accident. You owe me that, Karen..." David Hallam had written those words in his last letter to his wife from a small village in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains. Ten days later he was dead. ...



  • THE HAUNTED CAVE was hidden in the garden of Aunt Persis’ Cape Town, South Africa home. For Lanny Dustin and Joel Monroe the cave -- rumored to be the den of a ghostly tiger -- held a special fascination. But Bernita Dustin felt any place Joel wen...



  • To Mrs. Devery, whose whole world is Staten Island, strangers are not people: they are Jews or Catholics or Cubans or whatever is unlike herself, and therefore very strange indeed. All of which is rather ironic, of course, since the children of the n...



  • To Mrs. Devery, whose whole world is Staten Island, strangers are not people: they are Jews or Catholics or Cubans or whatever is unlike herself, and therefore very strange indeed. All of which is rather ironic, of course, since the children of the n...



  • She had run screaming from that house as a child. And ever since that night, Laurie Morgan had been unable to remember the blind terror that drove her into the darkness. It was frightening to have her whole childhood erased from memory. But the real ...



  • As soon as Gail Tyler and her brother Warren come to visit their mother's family on the Grecian island of Rhodes, they are caught in the tangles of a dark family secret. Gail is soon enmeshed in a series of events that pull her deeper and deeper ...



  • WHO WAS THE MYSTERIOUS PASSENGER? From the moment Laurie and her sister, Celia, arrived at their Aunt Serena’s home on Staten Island they were intrigued by the big, gloomy house next door. Why was Norman, the boy who lived there, so unfriendly? ...



  • The Palm Beach home of Ross Logan. It contains his enigmatic past, his celebrated collection of Oriental art and a prized new possession--his terrified young bride. A spellbinding saga of love betrayed and a woman trapped by the past. Here is a no...






  • With a portfolio of drawings under her arm and a red feather in her hat, Marel Gordon came to the city, determined to establish herself as an illustrator of children's books. Hard work landed her a job with an exciting literary agency. The job was no...



  • From the very beginning, for Lindsay Phillips, there was the memory of that terrible cane with the dragon's head-threatening horror, torment, death. And always there was Vermilion whispering in Lindsay's ear: "Go! You must go to Arizona. Everything y...



  • For Lora, the marriage to Wade Tyler was an escape from loneliness and from the ruined South which had been her home. For Wade, the wounded young Union officer she had so tenderly nursed, the marriage helped ease the loss of his beloved first wife. ...



  • SUMMER OF SECRETS Jan Pendleton thought visiting her grandmother for the summer would be quiet and dull. But that was before she met Neil, the good-looking boy who lived next door, and standoffish Patrick who owned a motor boat, and before she rea...



  • Laurie Morgan's life in New York is haunted by childhood memories she can never quite name. But when her grandmother summons her back to Jasper, Colorado, she finds that the past is very much alive. Laurie soon discovers that voices from the past whi...



  • EMERALD takes heroine Carol Hamilton to the intriguing, subtly shadowed world of Palm Springs, California, where a secret reaching back into Hollywood history is about to explode with consequences menacing many lives. The names of Monica Arlen and ...



  • While spending the summer in the country, a young girl falls in love with the neighbor's horse, but her attempts to befriend the mare are thwarted by mysterious events involving a crimson ghost-dog and the horse's "crazy" owner. Su...



  • Her husband was a famous rock singer. His death was a mystery. Now someone was trying to drive her mad. Hollis Sands has never gotten over her husband's death. Ricky had been a famous popular singer and she wrote her best songs for him. Hollis ...



  • SOMETHING EVEIL WAS BECKONING. AND SHE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO ANSWER ITS SINISTER CALL. Laurel York has dreamed of this reunion with her father, the famous writer Clifton York, for years. And when she follows him down to the exotic Florida Keys, bot...



  • A haunting, contemporary tale of deception and romance set by the breathtaking vistas of California's Monterey Bay... A COMPASSIONATE WOMAN HAUNTED BY HER PAST. A MYSTERIOUS MAN WHO LEADS HER TO LOVE. AND THE DANGEROUS SECRET THAT IS STRONGER TH...



  • Amid the exotic beauty of Hawaii, a woman searches for the secret of her past... HE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM, SHE WAS ONLY A CHILD. BUT SHE COULD NEVER FORGET HIS VOICE, HIS EYES, OR HIS KINDNESS.... So much had happened since those exotic days on...



  • She had given up all hope for her kidnapped daughter -- until a stranger beckoned from beautiful Vancouver Island... "I MUST WARN YOU THAT I HOPE THIS CHILD WILL NOT PROVE TO BE YOURS. BUT I MUST BE SURE..." Jennifer Blake could still vividly r...



  • She hopes to escape her own psychic powers in the tranquil Virginia countryside. But she can't outrun the evil she forsees... "YOU MUST STAY. YOU KNOW YOU MUST. YOU'RE COMMITTED TO STOPPING WHATEVER HAS BEGUN. YOU'LL FIND THE MURDERER YOU SENSE....



  • It begins one momentous October day when an unexpected letter arrives, inviting Lynn McLeod to the Virginia Blue Ridge home of Stephen Asche, her former husband. Stephen's daughter - by another woman - is troubled and needs her help. Lynn is a clinic...



  • A STRANGE SEARCH The mysterious “golden horn” was the key to her fortune, Vicki Stewart was told by the young gypsy she befriended in Istanbul. She was spending the summer in this fascinating, ancient city, living with her father in a real pas...



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    She had a past she never knew and a future barred by strange and powerful secrets... A strange sense of foreboding warned me not to relax my guard - that every shadow might be haunted .... Successful author Molly Hunt, the adopted daughter of L...



  • Following instructions contained in the parting gift from her Grandmother when she set out for Isle Of Skye, would lead to startling surprises for Cathy MacLeod. She and her standoffish cousin Don, would be drawn in a search for answers to baffling p...



  • As soon as Gail Tyler and her brother Warren come to visit their mother’s family on the Grecian island of Rhodes, they are caught in the tangles of a dark family secret. Gail is soon enmeshed in a series of events that pull her deeper and deeper in...



  • THE HAUNTED CAVE was hidden in the garden of Aunt Persis’ Cape Town, South Africa home. For Lanny Dustin and Joel Monroe the cave -- rumored to be the den of a ghostly tiger -- held a special fascination. But Bernita Dustin felt any place Joel wen...



  • Susan Prentice has come home to Virginia's eastern shores to find her past. Twenty-five years ago, her mother fell to her death down the steps of the family's ancestral home. Susan has little memory of that accident, or of her maternal grandmother, A...



  • The Ghost of Kyoto When Celia and her brother Stephen arrive in Kyoto to spend the summer with their book-writing grandmother, they are only looking forward to a pleasant summer vacation abroad. But they soon find themselves involved in a strange ...



  • The lush, secluded mountains of North Carolina's Lake Lure had drawn Lauren Castle into their spell. It was here, in 1938, that Hollywood's glamour girl, Victoria Frazer, drowned during a scandalous affair with actor Roger Brandt. Few knew about the ...



  • Lacey Elliot seems to have everything - looks, talent, and a thriving business - but there has always been a great deal missing from her life. For the past thirty years, her mother has staunchly refused to discuss Lacey's absent father or the fact th...



  • Shining with intrigue, allure, and passionate suspense, Amethyst Dreams is Phyllis Whitney at her most spectacular -- a story bejeweled with hypnotic prose and spellbinding secrets... Seeking shelter from her own broken dreams, Hallie Knight answers...


Award-Winning Books by Phyllis A. Whitney

Mystery of the Hidden Hand
1964 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Juvenile


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Phyllis A. Whitney has published 73 books.

Phyllis A. Whitney does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Amethyst Dreams, was published in July 1997.

The first book by Phyllis A. Whitney, The Red Carnelian, was published in January 1943.

No. Phyllis A. Whitney does not write books in series.