Victorian English History

He will live forever, hunting the undead…. Aaron McReynolds is born in an Ireland where vampires reign and humans rely on secret pacts to keep themselves safe from the ones they dare not speak of. When those promises fail, he takes it upon himself to do whatever it takes to protect his family from the monsters that haunt Killarney. Transforming into a Guardian gives Aaron enormous power, but it also comes with a price. Live forever, but never rest; seek out those who would destroy mankind and terminate them. Discovering the one he loves most of all has turned, Aaron is faced with the ...

Oliver Twist attends a costume ball that ends with parliamentary candidate Trevor Newsome disappearing days before the election. Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy, and Puss in Boots occupy a Swiss castle where immortality may lie hidden. When Long John Silver arrives, Oliver has to do some fast thinking to protect more than just his own life from the pirate who says he only cares about rescuing his daughter. Marooned on Crown of Thorns Island, Oliver must defeat enemies old and new and deal with a tentacled monster and a human one. Child slaves who think they are going to school create automatons ...

There are many different past presences that continue to ‘reside’ at Bedford Springs as ‘permanent’ guests. That is part of the charm of Bedford Springs, its haunting ambiance. In this book, however, the focus will center on the continuing Victorian presence at Bedford Springs.Many contemporary ‘sightings’, from both staff and guests, have involved Victorian ghosts. Is this mere coincidence, a mistaken identity of perception, a ‘normalcy’ turned ‘anomaly’, or is it something more? We will explore that latter possibility: the Victorian ghost as ‘returning guest’. We ...

Savory Suppers and Fashionable Feasts offers a delightfully flavorful tour of dining in America during the second half of the 19th century. Susan Williams investigates the manners and morals of that era by looking at its eating customs and cooking methods. As she reveals, genteel dining became an increasingly important means of achieving social stability during a period when Americans were facing significant changes on a variety of fronts - social, cultural, intellectual, technological, and demographic.

While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the 19th century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links", and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery".

A photograph becomes a sudden portal into a Victorian summer almost two hundred years ago… Browsing in an old bookshop, Harry Inman comes across a fragile metal plate showing the image of a famous hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY, dated 1847. He knows he holds in his hand a rare daguerreotype, the earliest form of photography. The small, framed image is eroding, but not before it opens a window into the past, one that pulls Harry literally into another time and space. It is a world that appears increasingly mesmerizing and seductive to him, the Saratoga Springs of grand hotels and Victorian ...

This is the story of the author’s two paternal great-great-grandfathers, both of whom spent over forty years helping to save lives on the Isles of Scilly: Edwin Lewis Davis as the keeper of St Agnes Lighthouse and John Grenfell Moyle as the islands’ only doctor. It also follows the mariners, miners, preachers and teachers of the Moyle and Davis families as they become part of the great Cornish diaspora. We accompany them over the seven seas aboard speedy clippers, to the Antipodes during the gold rush, to the industrial north of England, to lighthouses along rugged coastlines and to the...

About the Adventure Story Series and The Sherlock Holmes Cookbook San Francisco Bay Area theater stage director, Broadwayworld nominee, advisor, and award-winning artist John DeGaetano launches this incredible cookbook and offers a fresh twist on twenty-seven adventures in the Sherlock Holmes 10 Minute Stories Collection. The book also includes a 10 Minute Stories full-color character image gallery. Based in part from the writings of Holmes’ long-time friend Dr. Watson. The stories are homage to Conan Doyle as you experience his iconic characters, their process in solving the cases, and ...

Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women to express themselves. But not so within the social sphere of the seance - a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic. Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and, most important, influence, as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead.

When the magical secrets of The Emerald Isle beckon, will she survive answering the call? Ohio, 1846. Valentia McDowell wishes she could rest. Plagued by nightmares of her grandmother’s mysterious brooch lost in Ireland, the well-off young woman aches to find her lost family in Ireland. But as she dodges marriage proposals from odious local farmers, she can’t shake the sense that a powerful inheritance awaits her across the ocean… if she can weather the treacherous journey. Can Valentia uphold a destiny she doesn’t yet understand without losing everyone she loves? An Immigrant's ...

After joining the Order of the Crystal Daggers, led by her dauntless grandmother, Lady Penelope, Eleanora Svobodová set out to save her kingdom from oncoming devastation. And she failed. Following the attack on Prague Castle, Eleanora is determined to redeem herself. She sets out to win Karl’s trust while distancing herself from Ferdy, whose secrets and lies have done nothing to stop her from falling in love with him.

Lani hates to leave her beloved Lahaina behind, but she has no choice. Lahaina, 1850. What would you do if you were being forced to marry a man you didn’t love? Lani takes the only option open to her and stows away on a ship bound for San Francisco. Aidan Edwards has clawed his way back from a downward spiral of drinking and self-loathing. Bound for San Francisco, he’s healthy and happy for the first time in years, but he still doesn’t trust himself around women. Can he save the beautiful Hawaiian woman from a disastrous marriage?

Sold to a brothel owner, Lily vows to fight back Lily's happy life in Shanghai becomes a distant memory when her father dies and her devious aunt sells her to a brothel owner in San Francisco. But Lily wasn't born in the Year of the Tiger for nothing. Determined to escape, she watches for her chance in the midst of chaotic Gold Rush San Francisco. With her father gone and her faith in people shattered, Lily refuses to believe that love exists... even after she meets Devon, the young Bostonian who vows to protect her from further harm.

An unlikely trio of ghost hunters ply their trade in Victorian England. But have they met their match? London, 1871. When I applied for the position of bookkeeper with Professor Twickham and his daughter, I lied about my qualifications. In turn, they lied about the job for which I was applying. Had we not been so untruthful with each other, there might have been fewer night terrors stalking the inhabitants of the City. Fewer unexplained disappearances. Fewer deaths. Now, nobody is safe from the vengeful spirits we've unleashed. With no time to spare, we face an impossible task: we must ...

The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization. And to get us there, they created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilization of the resources of the British Empire.

To many Queen Victoria was a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, portrayed as an aging, stiff widow. But in truth Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional. A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources, showing us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before.

For over six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great empire. Beside her for more than 20 of those years was her beloved husband and the father of their nine children, Prince Albert. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist and bibliophile, Albert was one of the architects of Victorian Britain's transformation as a centre of political, technological, scientific and intellectual advancement. Albert lived only 42 years but fathered four royal dynasties and helped pioneer the modern constitutional monarchy.

When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was ‘fascinating’, she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man’s charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake.... In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the 19th century, Isabella Robinson’s scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife’s longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.

July 1839, without the permission of the English Government, the New Zealand Company ship, Tory, quietly departed England, anxious to reach New Zealand with the utmost speed. Expedition leader, Colonel William Wakefield's objective is clear - acquire millions of acres of valuable land from the natives at the lowest possible price. On board the Tory, Andrew and Eleanor Stewart, young Scottish emigrants indentured to the New Zealand Company, are excited at the prospect of beginning a new life in a perfect town called Britannia. It's the Utopia the company promised.

A Room of His Own sheds light on the mysterious ways of male associational culture as it examines such topics as fraternity, sophistication, nostalgia, social capital, celebrity, gossip, and male professionalism. The story of clubland (and the literature it generated) begins with Britain's military heroes home from the Napoleonic campaign and quickly turns to Dickens's and Thackeray's acrimonious Garrick Club Affair.