The Fifth Room

About the Book

The Fifth Room is a secret sanctuary hidden behind the velvet rot of A Toronto speakeasy. Its front is for men — smoke, whiskey, illusions of power. But in the sacred back room, women enter carrying ruin: betrayals, secrets, shame they have buried for years. Inside, they are unmade and remade. Masks fracture. Wounds are stripped bare. And in candlelight and shadow, transformation takes hold.

Charlotte has lived unseen for decades — ex-wife, mother, daughter, always “too much” or “not enough.” Ashby Vale, heir to a legacy built by his mother, June, chooses her as one of the women worthy of the room. To Ashby, The Fifth Room is sacred, created to honor a woman the world ignored. To Charlotte, it is the first place where she is truly seen.

But the sanctuary exists in a city of predators. Lennox Harper, rock star and sadist, thrives on breaking women for sport. Professor Sage, obsessed with Lennox and his cruelty, lures Charlotte’s niece Ivy into a spiral of manipulation. Their darkness collides with the women’s search for rebirth, pushing them toward a trial that will expose every
lie, every cruelty, every mask. 

Gothic, cinematic, and psychologically charged. The Fifth Room is a story of ruin and resurrection, where trauma becomes transformation and survival is written in shadow.

About the Author

Charlotte Grace Thorne crafts Gothic fiction that lingers in the spaces between shadow and light. Her work explores the psychology of predators and survivors, weaving stories of trauma, transformation, and the unmaking of masks. The Fifth Room is her debut novel, a darkly cinematic tale where ruin collides with rebirth, and silence is broken in the most sacred of spaces. Drawing inspiration from Gothic literature, psychological thrillers, and the haunting beauty of music, Thorne writes with an eye for atmosphere and a voice rooted in both intimacy and dread.