Old Hepzibah Pyncheon lives in her family's decaying mansion, a reportedly cursed house built about 200 years earlier. The Pyncheon family no longer has the riches it once did, and Hepzibah struggles to support herself and her brother Clifford. Their niece Phoebe arrives and asks to live with them, bringing hope back into the house. But another visitor'the conniving Judge Pyncheon'launches his plot to uncover a lost family fortune. As events unfold, the family encounters bloody secrets and sins in their ancestors' history. This is an unabridged version of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance novel, first published in 1851.