Lady of the Shroud is an adventure novel in the form of a memoir. Rupert Sent Leger, a young Englishman, unexpectedly inherits a property in the Balkans and travels there to claim it. He finds himself in a troubled region on the edge of war, and is soon visited by a mysterious young woman who appears wrapped in a funeral shroud and is said to be a ghost.
The story combines romance, political intrigue, naval and military action, and a hint of the supernatural. Its hero takes on the cause of a small Balkan nation threatened by powerful neighbours. It shows Stoker's interest in adventure and in questions of national struggle, beyond his better-known vampire fiction.