Dracul: The bestselling prequel to the most famous horror story of them all

'I never wished him to be real. I wouldn't wish for any of this. But that does not make it any less so...'

The year is 1868, and twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker had barricaded himself inside a room at the top of the tower of a long-abandoned abbey. He is armed with mirrors, crucifixes, holy water, a basket of white roses and a gun. His only solace is a bottle of plum brandy. His ferment prayer that he will survive this one night.

Desperate to leave a record of what he has witnessed, the young man scribbles out the events that brought him to this point - and tells an extraordinary tale of childhood illness, a mysterious nanny, and stories once thought to be fables now proven true.

Nearly 150 years after the publication of Dracula, Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker, went back to his ancestor's original journals and notebooks to look into mysteries and unanswered questions surrounding that extraordinary novel. Drawing on what he found, he and best-selling author J.D. Barker have crafted a chilling story that takes readers to the very beginning to reveal the origins of Count Dracula himself, of his creator - and of the elusive, enigmatic woman who bound them together.