Victorian History

In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women.

Perhaps one of the best known of the English monarchs, Queen Victoria forever shaped a chapter of English history, bequeathing her name to the Victorian age. In Queen Victoria, Lucy Worsley introduces this iconic woman in a new light. Going beyond an exploration of the queen merely as a monarch, Worsley considers Victoria as a woman leading a truly extraordinary life in a unique time period.

The Duchess of York, Agatha Wycliffe is a powerful and influential woman who commands respect by virtue of both wealth and political connections. She is ruthlessly ambitious and, over the years, has left more than a few dead bodies in her wake. In her world of carriages, gas lamps, royalty, and slums, she is loved by some and feared by most. She has decided to bring Geoffrey Wycliffe through the gateway to her world. With the right manipulation and planning, he could help her to achieve her end – to wield the ultimate power. But he would need protection as there were some in this ...

Empire of the Dead A Sherlock Holmes: Zombie Slayer Mystery Book Nine in the Bestselling Series New York City, 1900. The Gilded Age is cracking at the edges. Beneath the marble facades and gaslit boulevards, something unspeakable stirs. Holmes and Watson arrive in Manhattan expecting a quiet beginning to their American lecture tour. Instead, they’re swept into a chilling mystery when the daughter of a powerful railroad tycoon vanishes from her Fifth Avenue mansion—without a trace. The case deepens when a mutilated corpse is discovered in Central Park… a policeman, half-devoured, with ...

Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts - and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane - in her diary. One day Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella's entries. Aghast at his wife's perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. The trial would be a cause célèbre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society.

Sherlock Holmes at his finest in... Twelve short stories that plunge... into the mind of Sherlock Holmes. Each case provokes a new emotion. Each story dives deeper into the mysterious Baker Street Universe. A realm that is parallel to ours in another universe. A world where anything is possible. A place where anything can happen. And often does! That needs a smart man, a clever detective to solve crimes… That lurk in the darker regions of a Victorian London… Where monsters and mad men dwell.

Secrets of the Old Priests is a historical fiction novel set in the heart of Essex, England during the captivating Victorian era. The gripping narrative is ingeniously woven around the imposing, history-infused Fletcher Court estate and the intricate lives that revolve within it. The narrative unfurls with the introduction of Lucy Bellamy, who permeates the world of Sir William Fletcher and his daughter, Alicia, as a governess. Sir William's budding fondness for Lucy culminates in marriage, significantly altering the dynamics at Fletcher Court. Lucy's ascendance to Lady Fletcher stirs a ...

In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris re-creates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today.

Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation, and surgeons were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers.

The legend of Maggie's Bridge is well known to locals. In the late 1800's a young girl, pregnant and frightened, loses her life on a lonely bridge in a terrible storm. But what is the truth behind the story? Who was Maggie Bloxom? What fates brought her to that dark place and stole her future away from her? Claire Ludlow is a local. She grew up visiting the bridge at midnight and calling for Maggie. One night when she was 16 she sees more than she thought possible. When life draws her back to her home town years later and drops her within arms reach of the bridge, can she use newly ...

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.

LOVE, AMBITION & SCANDAL COLLIDE AT THE 1893 CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR Dora Chambers may be the newest Lady Manager at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but it isn't quite the plum position she expected. Instead of afternoon teas and fancy dinner parties, she finds herself on the dusty Midway Plaisance, tasked with overseeing the Egyptian dancers whose shimmies and scant costumes are stirring up a scandal. Fueled by the Fair's progressive spirit and heady enthusiasm, Dora rises above her disappointment and embraces a determination to fulfill her duty and aid her husband's social ambition. But as ...

Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.

Hilda Beauchamp believes that God guides the life of every believer—and that it is her job to guide God. Hilda’s plans meet many complications, but at least one of her prayers gets answered when the winds of spiritual revival sweep England, stirred by the great evangelistic campaigns of D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey. Word of Hudson Taylor’s mission to China fires imaginations and missionary fervor within the Cambridge community. But Hilda and the charming Kynaston Studd—whom Hilda has slated to marry her sister—find their plans sidelined. Kynaston was the leader, the first within his...

Like her previous books, this book will be the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life, and the conditions in which most people lived, so often left out of history books. This period of mid-Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects.

The year is nineteen and five and the setting is Windsor Castle. The Queen has united all of Europe, Asia, and America under her rule. With occurrences of magic being interpreted as miracles, religious war becomes inevitable. Seen by both Catholics and Protestants as the devil incarnate, Agatha finds herself at odds with old institutions. This will be a war that will be fought, not with guns and bombs but with powerful magic. As the intensity increases, someone new comes into play. Agatha’s mother, who has not been seen or heard in fifteen hundred years, returns from virtual oblivion and ...

Who lived to regret her "deathbed" confession? Was Amelia Dyer mad or wicked? Why did the judiciary look compassionately on women who committed infanticide? Among over 80 women whose stories appear in this book, some were tragic; some were evil; some were mad; and several were undoubtedly innocent of the murders for which they were hanged.

For the first time, The Secret Royals uncovers the remarkable relationship between the royal family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Princess Diana. In an enthralling narrative, Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac show how the British secret services grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relationships between senior spies, the aristocracy and the monarchy.

Vicky, Alice, Helena, and Beatrice were historically unique sisters, born to a sovereign who ruled over a quarter of the earth's people and who gave her name to an era: Queen Victoria. Two of these princesses would themselves produce children of immense consequence. All five would curiously come to share many of the social restrictions and familial machinations borne by 19th-century women of less-exulted class.

In the shadows of America's heartland, a nightmare took root behind the white fences of La Porte, Indiana. Belle Gunness, the "Black Widow of La Porte," appeared to be a grieving widow and loving mother—but behind her mask lurked a predator without equal. With cold calculation, she lured dozens of men to her farm with promises of love and fortune, only to lead them to their gruesome deaths. When fire finally consumed her farmhouse, the horrifying truth was laid bare: mass graves, dismembered bodies, and a mystery that would haunt the nation for generations. Did Belle perish in the flames...

As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst, Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study. When Lord Gleinheigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war.