The eponymous heroine is an unusually free-spirited widow in Victorian London. She assists those of the upper class in solving the mystery behind scandals. This lengthy tome is actually 4 separate novels. It’s dark, slightly underhanded, and good fun. Excerpt: Only two people from the breakfast table braved the weather. One of these was Mrs…
REVIEW: THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED by John Boyne
When Eliza Caine and her father brave the dreadful London weather to listen to the prolific Mr. Dickens read his new story, they could hardly have imagined the consequences. Eliza’s beloved father catches a chill and within hours he is dead. Eliza, alone in the world, and no way to pay the rent of her…
31 Days of Halloween — October 21, 2013
Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blistering gale from the south-west, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers. The wise mariner stands far out from that evil place. On the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea. It was a…
31 Days of Halloween – October 19, 2013
Tithonus By Alfred, Lord Tennyson The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of…
REVIEW: ASYLUM by John Harwood
Weary, windswept, and wet, a young woman arrives outside Tregannon House, an estate-turned-asylum in somewhere near Cornwall in England. She awakens with little memory of how she got there, or why. She is convinced, however, of her identity as Georgina Ferrars. The only problem is the kind staff at the asylum assure her she…