From a New York Times–bestselling author, Charlotte and Thomas Pitt must solve the case of a young gentleman’s sordid murder—before an innocent man hangs. The naked body of an aristocratic youth turns up in the sewers beneath Bluegate Fields, one of London’s most notorious slums. But Arthur Waybourne had been drowned in his bath, not in the Thames. More shocking still was that the boy had been sexually violated and infected with syphilis before he was murdered. Despite Inspector Thomas Pitt’s efforts to fully investigate the crime, the family closes ranks, stonewalling Pitt, leaving him to wonder what they are hiding. All evidence points to Arthur’s tutor, Jerome, as the murderer. The courts agree and Jerome is sentenced to hang. Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, don’t believe the answer is so simple. But if not Jerome, then who molested and infected the boy? To learn the truth, Charlotte uses her familiarity with the upper classes to draw aside the curtain of lies, while Pitt defies his superior and the boy’s family to follow a trail that leads him into the foulest streets of London through a web of deceit involving male prostitution and pedophilia. In a race against time, Thomas and Charlotte must find the real killer to save Jerome from the hangman’s noose.
On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens -- at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world -- hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying? Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.
London and the Culture of Homosexuality explores the relationship between London and male homosexuality from the criminalisation of all 'acts of gross indecency' between men in 1885 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 - years marked by an intensification in concern about male-male relationships and also by the emergence of an embryonic homosexual rights movement. Taking his cue from literary and lesbian and gay scholars, urban historians and cultural geographers, Matt Cook combines discussion of London's homosexual subculture and various major and minor scandals with a detailed examination of representations in the press, in science and in literature. The conjunction of approaches used in this study provides fresh insights into the development of ideas about the modern homosexual and into the many different ways of comprehending and taking part in London's culture of homosexuality.
Charting an 'aesthetic', post-realist tradition of writing, this book considers the significant role played by John Ruskin's art criticism in later writing which dealt with the new kinds of spaces encountered in the nineteenth-century.
The sleuthing couple pursues a serial killer through Victorian London in an exciting entry in the “unfailingly rewarding” New York Times–bestselling series (The New York Times). A serial killer is loose in the slums of Devil’s Acre. The murders are brutal, but it is the killer’s grisly signature that shocks even Inspector Thomas Pitt, no stranger to death and violent crime. The victims are stabbed and sexually mutilated. When Pitt recognizes one of the victims as a blackmailing footman from a case on Callander Square, his investigation takes him from the brothels to the high reaches of Victorian society and into a world where upper-class women descend to depravity to relieve their boredom. Despite Pitt’s warnings, his wife, Charlotte, pursues her own investigation. With the help of her sister Emily, Lady Ashworth, Charlotte reenters the elegant drawing rooms of Callander Square to find out more about the former footman who, Pitt discovers, owned an exclusive high-class whorehouse with—what else—exclusive high-class whores. As Pitt and Charlotte approach the same dangerous conclusion from differing paths, no one is spared—not even Pitt.
To understand hatred and civility in today's world, argues Christopher Lane, we should start with Victorian fiction. Although the word "Victorian" generally brings to mind images of prudish sexuality and well-heeled snobbery, it has above all become synonymous with self-sacrifice, earnest devotion, and moral rectitude. Yet this idealized version of Victorian England is surprisingly scarce in the period's literature--and its journalism, sermons, poems, and plays--where villains, hypocrites, murderers, and cheats of all types abound.
'The most important study on this subject in years, perhaps ever' Phillip Knightley, SUNDAY TIMES A history of drug-taking, telling the story across five centuries of addicts and users: monarchs, prime ministers, great writers and composers, wounded soldiers, overworked physicians, oppressed housewives, exhausted labourers, high-powered businessmen, playboys, sex workers, pop stars, seedy losers, stressed adolescents, defiant schoolchildren, the victims of the ghetto, and happy young people on a spree. It is also the history of one bad idea, prohibition. 'You'll find almost everything you ever wanted to know about drugs in this work, except how to get hold of them' Simon Garfield, FINANCIAL TIMES 'Everyone with any influence on government policy should read this book and wake up before it is too late' Phillip Knightley, SUNDAY TIMES
"When the sixth Duke of Radnor dies, his hapless son, Freddie, takes on his title, but it is his daughter, Lilith, who inherits his role as Head Witch of the Lazarus Coven. Raised as a witch, instructed in the art of necromancy, Lilith faces a daunting future, for the coven is threatened by a powerful group of sorcerers, the Sentinels. Nicholas Stricklend, a powerful force in the British government, is the Sentinel charged with wresting the Elixir from Lilith, and he cares not who he must crush in order to succeed. As a society beauty, engaged to another titled witch, and with a grieving mother and an unstable brother to look after, Lilith struggles to maintain her two very different existences. When she meets and falls in love with the talented artist Bram Cardale, she can no longer keep her life as a witch hidden, and she must choose between her loyalty to the coven, her duty to her family, and her love for Bram, or risk destroying everything she holds dear. Paula Brackston's debut novel, The Witch's Daughter, was the little book that could--with a captivating story, remarkable heroine, and eye-catching package, it has sold more than 130,000 copies in all formats. The Midnight Witch is another enchanting tale of love and magic, featuring her signature blend of gorgeous writing, a decadent and intriguing historical backdrop, and a headstrong and relatable heroine for which readers will cheer"--
The three books of the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Gemma Doyle trilogy available together for the first time, from the author of The Diviners series and Going Bovine. This collection contains the complete text of the three Gemma Doyle novels, a deliciously sweeping and haunting saga that won't let you go. It's the only way to get all three of Libba Bray's critically acclaimed novels in one bundle. A Great and Terrible Beauty: Gemma Doyle finds an icy reception at the Spence Academy in London, where she becomes entangled with the leader of the school's most powerful clique and discovers her own mother's connection to a shadowy group called the Order. Rebel Angels: Gemma is looking forward to spending time in London over Christmas, but her troubled visions of three girls dressed in white are intensifying and only the enchanted realms can give Gemma the answers she needs. The Sweet Far Thing: In a world where rules are everything, can a girl like Gemma survive? The conclusion to the bestselling series. Praise for Libba Bray’s novels: A Great and Terrible Beauty “A delicious, elegant gothic.”—PW, Starred “Shivery with both passion and terror.”—Kirkus Reviews “A true boarding-school drama, full of cattiness, Victorian repression, and steamy schoolgirl dreams of being ravished by virile gypsies.”—The Bulletin, Recommended Rebel Angels “This extraordinary novel moves along at breathtaking speed from beginning to end . . . astounding.”—VOYA in a Perfect 10 Review “Remarkable.”—SLJ The Sweet Far Thing “A rare treat that offers a bit of everything—romance, magic, history, Gothic intrigue—and delivers on all of it in 819 beautifully crafted pages.”—People “A triumphant conclusion of the trilogy begun in A Great and Terrible Beauty.”—PW, in its Best Books of the Year review Going Bovine “Libba Bray's fabulous new book will, with any justice, be a cult classic. The kind of book you take with you to college, in the hopes that your roommate will turn out to have packed their own copy, too. Reading it is like discovering an alternate version of The Phantom Tollbooth, where Holden Caulfield has hit Milo over the head and stolen his car, his token, and his tollbooth. There's adventure and tragedy here, a sprinkling of romance, musical interludes, a battle-ready yard gnome who's also a Norse God, and practically a chorus line of physicists. Which reminds me: will someone, someday, take Going Bovine and turn it into a musical, preferably a rock opera? I want the soundtrack, the program, the T-shirt, and front row tickets.”—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble “Libba Bray not only breaks the mold of the ubiquitous dying-teenager genre—she smashes it and grinds the tiny pieces into the sidewalk. For the record, I’d go anywhere she wanted to take me.”—The New York Times “A sublimely surreal saga.”—People “Offer this to fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seeking more inspired lunacy.”—PW, Starred
