Artist Walter Hartright arrives at Limmeridge House to instruct wealthy half-sisters Marian and Laura Fairlie. Their peaceful lives are marred by a strange woman dressed in white, who brings disturbing warnings to the family. When Laura announces her engagement to the dashing Sir Percival Glyde, it seems the darkness haunting them is lifting. But new dangers lurk closer than ever, and the only hope for averting disaster lies with the secret held by the woman in white.

Tells of a pair of half sisters whose lives end up caught in a grand conspiracy revolving around a mentally ill woman dressed in white. As the story unfolds, murder, love, marriage, and greed stand between the two women and happy lives. Their only hope is the secret the woman in white waits to tell them.

A sane woman is locked up in an asylum by a fraudulent English aristocrat who is afraid she may expose his 'secret.' Escaping while wearing a white gown, she runs into a youthful hero who becomes haunted by his brief meeting with this 'woman in white.'

When Walter Hartwright encounters a solitary, terrified, beautiful woman dressed in white on a moonlit night in London, he feels impelled to solve the mystery of her distress. The story, full of secrets, locked rooms, lost memories, and surprise revelations, features heroine Marian Halcombe and drawing-master Walter Hartright as sleuthing partners pitted against the diabolical Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. This gothic psychological thriller, a mesmerizing tale of murder, intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, has gripped the imagination of readers since its first publication in 1860. The breathtaking tension of Collins's narrative created a new literary genre of suspense fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing.

The mysterious appearance of a woman dressed in white leads to the discovery of a complicated plot involving a stolen inheritance and an escape from a mental institution.