When her mother dies, Mary Yellan makes the grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her husband, Joss Merlyn.

On arriving at the gloomy, threatening inn, with the coachman's warning echoing in her mind, she finds her aunt a cowering shadow, and her uncle a hulking, vicious brute. Even more alarming, Jamaica Inn has no guests and is never open to the public. Mary finds herself powerless to help her aunt, and is drawn unwillingly into the misdeeds of Joss and his accomplices. Even more disturbing are her feelings for Jem, a man she dare not trust . . .

Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.