A Rogue's Life
Frank Softly is a poor young gentleman whose snobbish father sends him to boarding school to make useful connections, but without success. He tries a variety of professions to earn his living but by the time he is twenty-five has failed at medicine, caricaturing, portrait painting, forging Old Masters and administering a scientific institution.
Frank then falls in love with Dr Dulcifer's daughter, Alicia, but discovers that her father is a counterfeit coin maker. Our likeable hero is unwillingly recruited into forging to compromise him as a felon. At this point the doctor considers him unsuitable as a son-in-law and sends Alicia away to Wales. The counterfeiters are betrayed to the Bow Street Runners but Frank escapes, finds Alicia and elopes with her to Scotland. Immediately after their wedding, Frank is arrested, tried and transported to Australia. As a model prisoner he becomes servant to his own wife who has travelled to the New World in the person of a widow. By the time Frank is officially released, their speculations have proved so successful that he is a rich man and a rogue no longer.
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My Lady's Money
Wilkie Collins
Originally published in 1877, Wilkie Collins's My Lady's Money is a social comedy about theft. A bank note is stolen from Lady Lydiard, and the wrong person is suspected. In order to discover the real thief, Robert Moody, who is in love with Lady Lydiard's adopted daughter Isabel, engages a sloppy investigator, Old Sharon. The novel blends detective fiction with social comedy. A popular and influential English novelist, dramatist, and short story writer, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was the son of a famous landscape painter, William Collins. Renowned for his sensational mysteries and romances, he is hailed as the inventor of the detective novel. Collins was a lawyer by training. Among his most famous works are The Woman in White (1860), The Moonstone (1867), and No Name (1862).
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The Haunted Hotel
Wilkie Collins
'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?' This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale. The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.
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Man and Wife
Wilkie Collins
In 1855, a clever young lawyer called Delamayn finds a loophole in the Irish marriage laws which enables John Vanborough to annul the marriage that stands in the way of his parliamentary ambitions. The abandoned wife, Anne Silvester, lives with her old friend, Blanche, married to Sir Thomas Lundie, together with their respective daughters, also called Anne and Blanche.Twelve years later Vanborough, and Anne and Blanche senior are all dead. Sir Thomas has remarried but dies shortly after, when the title and estate pass to his likeable brother, Sir Patrick Lundie, a retired lawyer in his seventies. Sir Thomas is survived by his second wife, the overbearing Lady Lundie, now responsible for the two daughters. The lawyer, Delamayn, has succeeded in life and become Lord Holchester with two sons, Geoffrey and Julius.The main action of the story begins in 1868 at Windygates, the Perthshire home of Lady Lundie. Blanche is now 18 and Anne, acting as her governess, 25. Visiting them are Sir Patrick; Arnold Brinkworth, engaged to Blanche; and Geoffrey Delamayn, the school friend who once saved Arnold's life. Geoffrey has promised to marry Anne but is now trying to break the secret engagement because he will be cut out of his father's will. Anne persuades him to accept a secret marriage and knowing a little of the Scottish law arranges to go to a lonely inn at Craig Fernie where she will announce that she is waiting for her husband. If Geoffrey arrives and openly asks for his wife, the presence of witnesses will validate the marriage according to Scottish law.Geoffrey receives a telegram that his father is dangerously ill and must go to London with his brother. He therefore asks Arnold to deliver a message to Anne at the inn, carefully telling him not to use his own name but merely to ask for his 'wife'. Arnold reluctantly agrees but makes Geoffrey put the message in writing. The note, stating Geoffrey's intention to marry, is written on the back of a letter from Anne signed 'your loving wife'. Arnold arrives at Craig Fernie and to preserve Anne's reputation pretends to be her husband in front of the Landlady and the head waiter, Bishopriggs. Anne reads the letter which is subsequently stolen by Bishopsriggs while Arnold innocently continues the deception, sleeping on the sofa and leaving early the next morning.Lord Holchester recovers but on his sick-bed remembers he was responsible for the infamous treatment of Anne's mother and asks Julius to help her if she should ever need assistance. At the same time Lord Holchester will only accept Geoffrey back into the family if he makes a respectable marriage. Julius and his mother have in mind the young widow, Mrs Glenarm, whom Geoffrey will meet on his return to Scotland.Anne is worried about her marital status and without disclosing Arnold's name, has Blanche consult Sir Patrick. Geoffrey overhears the opinion that the marriage is ambiguous, but that two people are legally bound in Scotland if they pretend to be married. He therefore adopts the view that Anne is technically married to Arnold and he is free to marry Mrs Glenarm. By this time Geoffrey has agreed to represent the South in the great foot-race, a national athletic event against the North, although a medical guest in the house, Mr Speedwell, warns that the exertion would endanger his health.Anne visits Blanche at Windygates and meets Geoffrey who declares he cannot now marry her as she is already married to Arnold. In a state of shock, she deliberately leaves her friends and hides in Glasgow where she consults two different lawyers. They give conflicting opinions as to whether she is married and she collapses under the strain with a miscarriage.Ignorant of Anne and Arnold's position, Sir Patrick brings forward Blanche's wedding to Arnold. The couple are recalled from their honeymoon in Switzerland when Sir Patrick hears from Anne, who reveals Arnold's predicament and the conflicting legal opinions. Anne meanwhile recovers the stolen letter from Bishopriggs and tries to convince Mrs Glenarm of Geoffrey's prior marriage. Lady Lundie deduces that Arnold was the man at Craig Fernie and mischievously persuades Blanche to leave Arnold for her house in London where Mrs Glenarm is also staying. Sir Patrick must prove the Craig Fernie marriage is invalid to safeguard Arnold's position with Blanche, whereas Mrs Glenarm wants it confirmed so that Geoffrey is free to marry her.Geoffrey has rented a secluded house in Fulham, left to Lady Lundie's former cook Hester Dethridge, an elderly woman who is mute after a traumatic marriage to a drunken husband and communicates only in writing. Against medical advice Geoffrey completes his intensive training for the foot-race. On the last lap of the four-mile course he collapses, unable to continue. He is abandoned by his friends because they lost money on the race and is taken home by his trainer, PerryTwo days after the race, all parties attend a family conference with their lawyers. Geoffrey refuses to accept Anne as his wife and Blanche will not return to Arnold until the ambiguity of the Craig Fernie marriage is resolved. Anne, despite knowing she will have to return to Fulham, bravely produces her letter which according to the Scottish law of consent confirms her marriage to Geoffrey.Following the death of Lord Holchester, Julius has inherited the family title and visits Geoffrey to proposes a separation. In return Julius will honour an unsigned codicil to their father's will, leaving Geoffrey a secure income. Geoffrey, however, having no grounds for divorce, intends to kill his wife. Pretending he will be a good husband he refuses his brother's offer and keeps Anne prisoner in the house.Geoffrey has always been unnerved by the silent and withdrawn Hester Dethridge. The secret of her own terror of him is revealed in a written confession of murder. Years before, when she complained to the police that her husband ill-treated her and stole her money, they were unable to help because the law gave a married woman no right to her own earnings. She determined to kill him as the only way to end her misery. While her husband lay in a drunken stupor, she suffocated him through the partition wall of his locked bedroom after carefully removing and replacing the lathe and plaster. Hester was not suspected of the crime but now sees visions of a second self urging her to kill again.Geoffrey blackmails Hester into helping him murder Anne by the same means but at the last moment she sees the apparition again and attacks Geoffrey. In the same instant he suffers a fatal stroke. Hester is confined in an asylum while Anne, free of Geoffrey at last, supplants Lady Lundie by marrying Sir Patrick and becoming the new female head of the family.
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I Say No
Wilkie Collins
Emily Brown is an orphan girl that almost no one can help but love when they meet her. She is pursued by two worthy men: Mr. Alban Morris, the drawing master at her school; and Rev. Miles Mirabel, a clergyman. However, one of them is lying to her after she discovers that her father's death wasn't natural, as she was led to believe.
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The Law and the Lady
Wilkie Collins
The book was published in 1875, by Wilkie Collins, although still in print, is largely forgotten now. Not quite as sensational in style as The Moonstone and The Woman in White, it is still a detective story.Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville despite objections from Woodville's family leading to disquiet for Valeria's own family and friends.Just a few days after the wedding, various incidents lead Valeria to suspect her husband is hiding a dark secret in his past and she discovers that he has been using a false name. He refuses to discuss it leading them to curtail their honeymoon and return to London where Valeria learns that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by arsenic. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'not proven' rather than 'not guilty' implying his guilt but without enough proof for a jury to convict him.Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime. In her quest, she comes across the disabled character Miserrimus Dexter, a fascinating but mentally unstable genius, and his devoted female cousin, Ariel. Dexter will prove crucial to uncovering the disturbing truth behind the mysterious death.