This collection represents the best of Alcotts adult oeuvre, starting with A Modern Mephistopheles, a dark Faustian tale inspired by A Long Fatal Love Chase. The stories in this volume display dramatic intensity and thrilling, suspenseful plots that show Alcott to be a complex and passionate writer. Readers will discover within this maelstrom of murder, deceit, obsessive desire, treachery, duplicity, and betrayal that love and honor can still conquer all.

The book takes its title from the tale "A Whisper in the Dark," arguably Alcotts high-gothic masterpiece, a story of imperiled innocence. Also featured are: "The Abbots Ghost," one of Alcotts few thrillers that employs the supernatural; "Perilous Play," a sensationalist story in which she suggests that with the appropriate stimulation—in this case hashish—even the innocent reveal a dark side; and V.V.; or Plots and Counterplots, fraught with passion and jealousy that introduces the mysterious Virginie Varens, the darkest heroine in all of her work.