18 books like Drood
Cleek, the man of the forty faces
Meet Hamilton Cleek – man of mystery, and master of disguise and derring-do.
Cleek’s exploits are, to say the least, highly improbable, but the book is enormous fun. The goodies are good and the baddies are very bad indeed, but beware – things are not always what they seem. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy a rattling good yarn!
Cleek is the central figure in dozens of short stories that began…
Shares: Detective, London, Mystery
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Shares: Biographical fiction, Historical Fiction, History
London
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Shares: London, Historical Fiction, History
The cask
A strange container is found on the London docks, and its contents point to murder
The cask from Paris is bigger than the rest, its sides reinforced to hold the extraordinary weight within. As the longshoremen are bringing it onto the London docks, the cask slips, cracks, and spills some of its treasure: a wealth of gold sovereigns. As the workmen cram the spilled gold into their pockets, an…
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Fifty Famous Stories Retold
There is an introduce younger kids to stories that every child should know. Includes the stories of Horatius Cocles, the 300 Spartans, King Alfred and the Cakes, the Wise Men of Gotham and more.
Shares: Biographical fiction, History
Flood
London, 1877. Phoebe Flood, a watch mender's daughter from Blackfriars, is hired as lady's maid to the glamorous Louisa LeClerk, a high class tart with connections to the underworld of gentlemen pornographers. Fascinated by her new mistress and troubled by strange dreams, Phoebe receives an extraordinary education in all matters sensual. And her destiny and secret self gradually reveals itself…
Shares: Social conditions, London
A Particular Eye for Villainy
From "an accomplished veteran" of crime fiction, a Victorian murder mystery featuring a female sleuth and her detective husband (Kirkus Reviews).When Mr. Thomas Tapley is found bludgeoned to death in his sitting room, his neighbor, Inspector Benjamin Ross of Scotland Yard, is immediately summoned.Little is known about the elusive gentleman until Mr. Jonathan Tapley, QC, hears of the news, and the…
Shares: Social conditions, History
A Rare Interest In Corpses
A classic mystery from "an accomplished veteran . . . [ who] knows her history and relates it with charm in this peek at Victorian morals and foibles" (Kirkus Reviews).
 
It is 1864 when Lizzie Martin takes up the post of lady's companion to a wealthy widow who is also a slum landlord. Lizzie is intrigued to learn that her predecessor as companion had disappeared, supposedly…
Shares: Social conditions, London
The Shifting Tide
William Monk knows London's streets like the back of his hand; after all, they are where he earns his living. But the river Thames and its teeming docks-- where towering schooners and clipper ships unload their fabulous cargoes and wharf rats and night plunderers ply their trades--is unknown territory. Only dire need persuades him to accept an assignment from shipping magnate Clement Louvain to…
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The Agony and the Ecstasy
Mr. Stone gives his signature style and thought to this story of Michelangelo. He points out often in this book that Michelangelo, before beginning a work, asks what it is he is trying to capture in the moment of his painting, sculpture, or poem. So it is with Mr. Stone. He wants to portray, as close as he can find, the moments of the life of this artist. What shaped him, what he loved, what (and…
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The Family
What is a family? Mario Puzo first answered that question, unforgettably, in his landmark bestseller The Godfather; with the creation of the Corleones he forever redefined the concept of blood loyalty. Now, thirty years later, Puzo enriches us further with his ultimate vision of the subject, in a masterpiece that crowns his remarkable career: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian…
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Shooting Crows At Dawn
Crime Novel -- rural Texas sheriff pursues three escaped killers while facing a re-election campaign he will likely lose.
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The bravo
Originally published in 1831, this novel is set in Venice in the bygone days of the Doges. It was inspired by Cooper's travels in Italy. The author has intended to give his countrymen, writes Cooper in his preface, "a picture of the social system of the soi-disant republics of the other hemisphere." Cooper aims to show, William Cullen Bryant said, that all systems which reserve power for the…
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The amateur gentleman
IN WHICH BABNABAS KNOCKS DOWN HIS FATHER, THOUGH AS DUTIFULLY AS MAY BE
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A Bitter Cut
Lady Kiera Darby plans to spend the summer reconnecting with friends and family in anticipation of the betrothal of her beloved brother. But when a future in-law is implicated in a murder, the party takes a deadly turn. . . .July 1833. Lady Darby and her dashing husband, Sebastian Gage, are settling into their newly renovated home at Bevington Park in Warkwickshire with their young daughter. With…
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Pan Michael An historical novel
The third and final book of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy takes a closer and more intimate look at one of the series’ protagonists: Pan Michael Volodyovski. The Polish Commonwealth has been through intense periods of war, and the peace that follows leaves one of its greatest heroes, Pan Michael, finally free to marry his beloved Panna Anusia. But in a twist of fate, she falls ill and dies, leaving…
Shares: Historical Fiction, History
St. George and St. Michael
It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers…
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Wolf Hall
Wolf Hall (2009) is a historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate, named after the Seymour family's seat of Wolfhall, or Wulfhall, in Wiltshire. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, Wolf Hall is a sympathetic fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. The novel…
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