Vivian Yin, former starlet and trailblazing Chinese Hollywood matriarch turned recluse, dies suddenly on a hot summer's day. Her remaining family members gather for her will, expecting to inherit her sprawling Southern California garden estate; the childhood home of her daughters.

But in a last-minute change of the will, that estate is passed on to another family. A rival family.

Racing to piece together the circumstances behind Vivian's death, both families move into the crumbling, vine-covered manor. But Vivian Yin's life was shrouded in mystery, and the decades-old house has a secret past of its own. They soon discover that The Manor of Dreams is haunted by more than just their memories...

Mexican Gothic meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in this deliciously dark and unputdownable gothic thriller.

"Richly imagined... Fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic ought to take note of this beautiful and haunting novel." - Publishers Weekly

"Packed with gothic plot, gushing blood, choking clods of dirt, and angry ghosts-a smorgasbord for devotees." - Kirkus

"The Manor of Dreams is a bejeweled puzzle box to unlock." - Shelf Awareness

"An atmospheric thriller that tackles what some people must pay for the great American dream." - Reader’s Digest

"A lushly crafted haunted house gothic, full of family secrets and forbidden romance and grounded in Hollywood's long history of racism and patriarchy." - CrimeReads

"A true modern classic. The Manor of Dreams is beautiful, eerie and woven with enough intrigue to hold all who enter captive. Christina Li remains unmatched in breathing characters to life - and the hauntings thereafter" - Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Longings

"The Manor of Dreams peels back the promises of the American Dream to reveal something more painful, more heartbreaking, and ultimately, more true. An ambitious, evocative meditation on the hurts passed down across generations - and how we heal" - Grace D. Li, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief

"Christina Li has woven together the struggles of immigration, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, the resentments between upstairs-downstairs "friends," and the glitz and disappointments of Hollywood to create a clever, unexpected, and lush ghost story. I curled up with The Manor of Dreams and read it over a single weekend." - Lisa See, author of Lady Tan's Circle of Women and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

"Haunting, tender, and intoxicating. Written with gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters, Li's gothic adult debut will leave you devastated until the very end, and then long after you've put the book down." - Carolyn Huynh, author of The Fortunes of Jaded Women

"You know that feeling when you watch the first episode of a streaming series and instantly know you're going to binge the whole thing? That's exactly how you'll feel after reading the first chapter of this book. A part of you-a very delighted part-will immediately think, "Cancel all my plans; I'm devouring this in one sitting." And that's exactly what I did. Deliciously eerie, culturally vibrant, and historically profound-The Manor of Dreams is a dark pleasure." - Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet