Few times of the year are more victorian than christmas. After all, he invented it Charles Dickens, the most Victorian and Christmas of the writers. Today I bring these 5 themed titles stocked with love, crime and mystery as a reading or gift for these days. From classic names like Thomas Hardy to contemporary successors with the essence of the time as Jessica fellows. In the middle, colections of stories and tales of various authors.
Desperate remedies - Thomas Hardy
Hardy is one of the great Victorian novelists and I could not make a better debut in this his first novel. With the sensual brushstrokes that stand out in his prose, Hardy composed here a portrait nestled in the English countryside with a seductive heroine as the protagonist and a unsolved crime.
So we have mysteries, suspense, murder and bigamy which also has traces of the style of another great of the genre, Wilkie Collins. Tells the story of Cytherea graye, a young woman maid who discovers that her crush, Edward, is engaged to another. That decides her to accept the marriage petition of the dark and seductive Aeneas Manston. But Cytherea will discover that her husband had murdered to his first wife.
After several adventures avoiding dangers and mistakes and with the help of his employer, the lady aldclyffeCytherea will eventually be free to marry Edward.
Victorian Detective Tales - Various authors
Hardy and Collins are also some of the names included in this anthology of 26 stories that show the evolution of the genre from its origins. So we have the hound detective that relentlessly pursues its prey and the deduction genius that solves crimes without disheveled. Or to criminal of passion and abrupt and at amoral brain that machines almost impossible crimes. Their descriptions also vary and those of more brutal crimes that are becoming more complex plots.
These stories walk us through all the history of a genre that not only famous authors such as Dickens, Collins or Conan Doyle, but also others that deserve to be remembered.
Victorian detectives - Michael Sims
With the subtitle of The pioneers of the detective novel, already puts in background on its content. It is a compilation of 11 stories policemen, with women like protagonists and in charge of solving a mysterious and complicated crime.
The greatest crime fighters of the time - and also some criminals - meet for the first time, such as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene or Lady Molly. Precedents of modern crime ladies, they star intelligent, agile and fun stories of women who did not conform to the role that rigid Victorian society had assigned them. His titles:
- The mysterious countess, WS Hayward.
- The unknown weapon Andrew Forrester Jr.
- Drawn daggers, CL Pirkis.
- The long arm, Mary E. Wilkins.
- The next door thing Anna Katharine Green.
- The man with the fierce eyes, George R. Sims.
- The adventure of the fussy old woman, Grant Allen.
- The notch of the cane, M. McDonnell Bodkin.
- The man who cut my hair Richard Marshall.
- The man who had nine lives Hugh C. Weir.
- The second bullet Anna Katharine Green.
Mitford's crimes - Jessica Fellowes
Jessica Fellowes is niece of Julian Fellowes, the creator of the exquisite television series Downton Abbey and also author of the excellent Belgravia, Victorian romance novel to use. And with the five official books, and also best sellers, of the series under his belt, it was logical that now he has started a new series of mystery novels with unsolved crimes. And this is the first title.
Let's go to 1919 to meet Louisa cannon, what do you dream of escape your life of poverty in London and, above all, from his dangerous uncle. His salvation is to carve out a posición within the Mitford family home at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire. There it will become maid, companion and confidant of the Mitford sisters, especially of Nancy, sixteen years old, very fanciful and imaginative.
But when a nurse named Florence Nightingale Shore is murdered On a train in broad daylight, Louisa and Nancy find themselves embroiled in the crimes of a murderer who will do whatever it takes to hide his secret.
Victorian love stories - Various authors
Another compilation, but this time from 22 love stories written by some of the best authors of the time that include the aforementioned Conan Doyle, Collins or Hardy with more illustrious names such as Henry JamesElizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde or Mary Shelley.
Most of the stories are chronologically ordered by the date of birth of the authors and in them we find everything: suspense, realism, betrayal, tenderness, interests, loss, fantasy and endings sometimes happy and sometimes very sad. Some of them were unpublished and also little-known authors who have been able to see the light.