Wilkie Collins

Called "the first and greatest of English detective novels" by T.S. Eliot, The Moonstone is a masterpiece of suspense. A fabulous yellow diamond becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Verinder. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. When the Moonstone disappears the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one...

Hide and Seek (1854) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Hide and Seek finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience...

Magdalen Vanstone and her sister Norah learn the true meaning of social stigma in Victorian England only after the traumatic discovery that their dearly loved parents, whose sudden deaths have left them orphans, were not married at the time of their birth. Disinherited by law and brutally ousted from Combe-Raven, the idyllic country estate which has been their peaceful home since childhood, the two young women are left to fend for themselves. While...

A remote castle in Wales inhabited by three older men is the last place on earth that a young, lively girl of 18 would want to spend time. And yet, when forced by circumstances to take up residence there for six weeks prior to coming of age, Jessie surprises them all by finding immense enjoyment in the experience and by capturing each of her adopted uncles' hearts. As the time grows near for her to return to England, the three brothers find it necessary...

The recently married Valeria Brinton uncovers an unsettling truth about her new husband, including a false identity and the potential murder of his first wife. Valeria is determined to solve the mystery of her husband's previous marriage and presumed guilt. Shortly after her wedding, Valeria Brinton learns her husband, Eustace Woodville, has been living a lie. His real name is Eustace Macallan and he was previously accused of murdering his first...

"Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Pratolungo, arrives to serve as her paid companion, Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, her shy and reclusive neighbour, also wealthy, who devotes himself to craftsmanship in precious metals. After being attacked and knocked unconscious by robbers, Oscar is nursed by Lucilla...

Basil (1852) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Basil finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience that continue...

Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel? Is The Haunted Hotel the tale of a haunting -- or the tale of a crime? The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice --- or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are there malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something...

The novel follows the fortunes of four women, all in one way or another 'fallen leaves', who are linked by their relationships with the hero, Amelius Goldenheart, and also by secrets from the past. Their histories are looked at from two perspectives: that of the ruthless capitalist society of England in which they live, and that of the Christian Socialism of the hero who has been brought up in a Utopian community in America. Collins modelled his description...

Wilkie Collins, a writer who can be counted on to put the sensation in sensational fiction. Nefarious doings including lying, cheating, and stealing. The theft of money from a locked desk, mysterious illnesses, deaths, and recoveries. The return of a body to life while in the Death House, poisons, a cypher, lovers kept apart by their families, a mad man, and at the end a wedding, the bride and groom in which the reader is invited to guess. (Goodreads)...