Another in the murder mystery series featuring the historical figures of Thomas De Quincey — the English Opium Eater — and his daughter Emily.
Another strong novel. I recommend it.
The year is 1855. The Crimean War rages. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the government. The Empire teeters. …
This killer targets members of the upper echelons of British society, leaving with each corpse the name of someone who previously attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. The evidence indicates that the ultimate victim will be Victoria herself. …
Murder As a Fine Art is the first in my three-book Victorian mystery/thriller series. Each novel has a backdrop of a real 1800s crime that paralyzed England …
Long before Jack the Ripper, the shocking Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 were the first publicized mass killings in English history. Never fully explained, they paralyzed London and all of England.
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Forty-three years later, the equally notorious Thomas De Quincey wrote a ground-breaking essay “Postscript: On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” in which he meticulously reproduced the Radcliffe highway multiple murders in blood-spattered detail, making readers feel they’re both the murderer and the victims.
In Murder As a Fine Art, shortly after this terror-drenched essay is published, a family is killed in the same horrific way as the earlier murders. It seems someone is using De Quincey’s essay as an inspiration—and a blueprint. And De Quincey himself is the obvious suspect. Aided by his brilliant daughter Emily and two determined Scotland Yard detectives, he must uncover the truth before more blood is shed and London itself becomes the next victim.
Washington Post called this book the “anti-Harry Potter you didn’t know you wanted.”
It is a little bit like Hogworts University … with sex and vodka.
But more than anything else this book is weird. It’s long. And by the end I still had not much idea what was happening to the students at the Institute of Special Technologies.
It seems this is the first book in the Metamorphosis cycle, three unconnected novels addressing themes of transformation.
Elevation is a an odd novella by American author Stephen King.
I like King but don’t like horror. Happily this is not at all a horror story, rather an engaging tale of how a man learns to live with a new puppy.
Scott Carey is losing weight but not mass. On the outside, he appears the same as always — an athletic 42-year-old man who looks about 230 pounds. But every time he weighs himself, the scale says he’s lighter. What’s weirder, it doesn’t matter what he’s wearing — or even what he’s holding. His weight just keeps dropping. …
Gripping historical fiction. Original. Superb in every way.
The story follows Alma Whittaker, daughter of a botanical explorer, as she comes into her own within the world of plants and science. As Alma’s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she starts a spiritual journey which spans the 19th Century.
Alma is a contemporary of Charles Darwin and independently comes up with something similar to Darwin’s evolution by natural selection. Sadly, Alma never published.
