Victorian Suspense

Charlotte Brontë is plunged into a perilous adventure and a passionate romance that leads her from the peaceful Yorkshire moors to the crime-infested streets of London, across the sea to the Continent, to the ports of Cornwall, the wilds of Scotland, and the palaces of Queen Victoria herself. Will Charlotte be able to stop a devious invisible villain whose schemes threaten her life, her family, and her country?

Jem Barbary spent most of his early life picking pockets for a wily old crook named Sarah Pickles - until she betrayed him. Now Jem wants revenge, but first he needs a new job. Luckily Alfred the bogler, the man who kills the child-eating monsters that hide in the shadows of Victorian London, needs a new apprentice.

A young man’s inheritance includes more than a house when an ebony-framed painting of a beautiful woman starts to exert a strange hold over its new owner. Could this lead to his tragic demise?

Whatever you do, don't go on to the beaches at dusk, or the Sand-Walker will come to your window at night. Such is the sinister warning given to the new lodger at the Beach Farm, a lonely house on the North Sea coast of England. But who, or what, is the Sand-Walker?

In this well-known classic, a school inspector travelling to the village of Pit End wonders whether the things he’s seeing are products of his imagination or something supernatural. There’s a rational answer, but is it the right one? Was It an Illusion is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

‘The Signalman’ (1866) is a short story by the English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870). In the story, a practical-minded narrator meets a railway worker who has been seeing supernatural visions. The narrator doubts the man at first, but at the story’s conclusion a strange event makes him a believer. 

Scoundrels, thieves, and rebels inhabit the rookeries - where dangerous men fall in love with fierce women. Abigail Vautille dreamed of escaping the Whitechapel rookery and starting a new life, until one tragic night left her scarred and penniless. To save her family from debtor's prison, she strikes a deal with the rogue who owns her father's gambling vowels-if he excuses the debt, for two weeks, she'll give him her body, but not her heart. Beauty and the Rake is a dark, gritty, and sexy full-length romantic suspense set in pre-Victorian working class London.

Haunted by a tragic mistake in her past that endangered her family and nearly cost the life of the only man she could ever love, Emily now lives a life of exile that just so happens to include sword play and stealth on the dark streets of London in an attempt to stop innocent people from coming to harm at the hands of seedy criminals. Caring not for her own safety, Emily embarks on a life of justice at all costs, if only to rid her mind of the ghostly image of her lost love.

Maisie Thomas spends every summer at Grange House, a hotel on the coast of Maine ruled by the elegant Miss Grange. In 1896, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms. It's only the first in a series of events that casts a shadow over Maisie's summer. As she considers the attentions of two very different young men, Maisie also falls under the gaze of Miss Grange, who begins to tell her disturbing stories of her past.

Isobel Amsel is wasting away in an asylum. Mad with boredom, she recklessly risks her future wandering the countryside. When an excursion nearly turns deadly, Isobel fears one of her enemies is targeting her, but she quickly discovers something far more insidious. The lives of two boys are at stake, and she desperately wishes her partner were by her side.

London, 1890. Mina Murray once lived an adventurous life, but after a tragedy in the forests of Transylvania, she left it all behind. Now she has settled into a quiet routine as a schoolteacher in London, engaged to the respectable solicitor Jonathan Harker, attempting to fit into the stuffy upper class London society to which he belongs. But when vampires abduct Jonathan, her dark past comes careening into her present. 

La misteriosa morte di un giovane studente, erede di un cospicuo patrimonio, mette in moto una spirale di intrighi e vendette destinata a durare più di vent'anni e nella quale viene coinvolta una dinastia di banchieri consumata dall'ambizione e dalla cupidigia. Un romanzo ambientato nell'Inghilterra vittoriana, nel quale l'autore descrive una dura guerra economica combattuta a colpi di delitti, ricatti e torbide passioni.

When a brutal attack leaves Agatha DeLacey blind, she and the Artful Dodger find themselves at the mercy of an experimental biomech surgery. Though the procedure restores Aggie’s sight, her new eyes come at an unnerving cost, and the changes in Dodger are even more alarming - instead of seeing Aggie as the girl he fancies, he now views her as a potential threat.

The Secret Agent was one of the first espionage novels ever written, and it is certainly one of the finest in the oeuvre of Joseph Conrad. The story concerns the attempt by a group of back-alley revolutionaries to destroy one of London's most famous landmarks and thereby set off a revolution.

Ninety-nine days remain in Isobel Amsel's sentence, and the world keeps spinning - just not for Isobel. Her twin brother disappears for unknown reasons, and she's left pacing in her cage like a tiger. While Isobel's rebellious adopted daughter, Sao Jin, keeps her on her toes, Riot is left to sort out his crumbling finances. And find a ring, which proves far more difficult than he imagined. With Isobel's release date closing in, Riot tries to sort out his life, his motivations, and his impending wedding, while Bel faces the question of what marriage and motherhood really mean.

London is in flux. The clop of the hansom cab has given way to the madness of the motorcar. And Sherlock Holmes, safe in the bee-loud glades of the Sussex downs, is lured back to London when a problem is posed to him by Dr. Watson and Watson's friend, Col. Higgins. Is the transformation of Eliza Doolittle from girl of the streets to duchess more than it seems? Is it really the work of Henry Higgins's phonetics lessons, or has another girl been substituted for her, and why? Has the original girl been murdered? Even Eliza's father can't say for sure.

A young banker, by the name of Mr Charles Petrie, returned home after riding his horse to dine with his wife, Grace, and her companion, Mrs Quinn. During and after dinner he had nothing to excite him save the receipt of a letter which somewhat annoyed him, and that his wife consumed rather more wine than he considered to be good for her health. Immediately after retiring to his room, he was seized with symptoms of irritant poisoning, and despite every effort made on his behalf, he succumbed to its effects.

Raven looks out over the small town of Cogsworth and imagines a life beyond her grandmother's mansion. But Raven holds a dark secret that prevents her from leaving. Now an orphan, Raven must do her best to hide her gifts of sight if she's to survive the cruel Victorian society. However, when a ghost of a child comes to her for help, Raven finds herself in the gas-lit streets of London, on the trail of a female serial killer. As she tries to solve the string of murders, she realizes that the murders are almost identical to those from a case left unsolved years before she was born. 

When not performing two sold-out shows every night, Music Hall Steampunk illusionists and consultants to Scotland Yard, slick-talking Michael Magister and the feisty Phoebe Le Breton, must solve the crime of the century, while saving the nation from a conclave of fiendish psychopaths led by the crazed renegade Jesuit known only as "The Black Bishop".

Jane Black is plain and smart, a combination sure to kill any prospects found in a London season. Pretending her wallflower status is of no concern, Jane focuses on the quiet country life she’s planned even as she struggles with the vow she made to her grandfather to protect the family. But when she discovers her grandfather’s friend, Dr. Seymour, carries with him the secret to unmasking the traitor behind the attacks on the Black family, Jane knows it’s her duty to rescue the doctor from Bedlam and carry him to safety. If only the Marquess of Evanshire will allow her to do so.