When Nora meets Magnus, the new coroner for the city of Philadelphia and her uncle Charley's old college chum, she begins to imagine a life beyond keeping house for Charley and his children. Magnus's sister Annabel seems overjoyed at the prospect of Nora joining the family, but this isn't reassuring: for Annabel can no longer be counted among the living, and she loves her brother a little too much.

"The Coroner's Bride" is an old-fashioned ghost story in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu, originally published in Exotic Gothic, Volume 5, edited by Danel Olson.