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Victorian

Book Review: A Fiancée’s Guide to First Wives and Murder by Dianne Freeman

By Janet Webb

August 13, 2021

November 1899. London. Life is coming up roses for Frances Wynn, the widow of the late Earl of Harleigh. She’s soon to be married to her next-door neighbor, the dashing George Hazelton. She and George share an affinity for solving troublesome mysteries. Frances is enjoying her fiancée’s company without the interference of her high-maintenance mama…

Film Review: Enola Holmes

By Hector DeJean

October 2, 2020

Sherlock Holmes was, is, and likely will remain a solid fuel source for the entertainment industry, and the very latest offering is the Netflix film Enola Holmes, based on the Edgar Award-nominated YA series by Nancy Springer. Millie Bobby Brown, who launched her career playing Eleven on Stranger Things, dives into the part of Sherlock…

Book Review: A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder by Dianne Freeman

By Janet Webb

June 24, 2019

In A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder, the second book in Dianne Freeman’s historical mystery series featuring the Countess of Harleigh, the adventurous countess finds out just how far some will some go to safeguard secret. Some issues are timeless, like money, independence, and family relationships. Frances Wynn, the widowed Countess of Harleigh, is…

The Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby

Book Review: The Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby

By Doreen Sheridan

April 12, 2019

In Carolyn Kirby’s debut novel, The Conviction of Cora Burns, Cora’s buried past begins to unearth itself, and Cora must find out where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts.  Victorian England is a terrible place for an impoverished woman. Cora Burns knows this firsthand. Born to a mother she knows only…

Q&A with Charles Finch, Author of The Vanishing Man

By Crime HQ

February 19, 2019

Criminal Element is thrilled to welcome author Charles Finch and his longtime editor (and the host of Case Closed, our new podcast series!) Charles Spicer. The two recently sat down to discuss Finch’s newest Charles Lenox mystery The Vanishing Man, Shakespearean London, England’s class system, and the what-ifs of time travel.  *** Charles Spicer: Did…

The Vanishing Man by Charles Finch

Book Review: The Vanishing Man by Charles Finch

By Angie Barry

February 18, 2019

Charles Finch’s The Vanishing Man is a prequel to his Charles Lenox Victorian series in which the theft of an antique painting sends Detective Lenox on a hunt for a criminal mastermind. …His eyes returned to the much smaller, smoky painting. Number five.   It was in a wood frame, not gilt like the others, and…

The English Wife by Lauren Willig: A Visual Guide

By Adam Wagner

November 29, 2017

GIFnotes: Giving you the basic plot summary of an upcoming book with the help of the Graphics Interchange Format. A scandalous novel set in the Gilded Age, full of family secrets, affairs, and even murder—take a visual tour of Lauren Willig's The English Wife!

Penny Dreadful: A Discussion of Alternatives

By Leanna Renee Hieber

November 10, 2016

*Deep breaths* Okay. Because I am a Gothic Victorian novelist well versed in Penny Dreadful’s tropes and subject matter, I’ve spent the past few months railing on panels (like DragonCon), ranting on Twitter, writing requested posts about the ending of the show, and addressing the regressive aspects of the finale and the storytelling disservice to…

From Gore to Grave Robbing: The History of Medicine as Inspiration

By E.S. Thomson

September 20, 2016

When searching for inspiration for Beloved Poison, the dark and extraordinary history of 19th-century medicine offered an evocative, alarming, and exciting world. The setting for my novel was an infirmary. Ramshackle and decaying, I used Old St. Thomas’s Hospital in London as my template. Instead of being places of hope and cure, in the mid-19th century,…

Review: Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson

By Ardi Alspach

September 12, 2016

Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson is a richly atmospheric Victorian crime novel, set in crumbling 1850s London infirmary, where murder is the price to be paid for secrets kept (Available September 13, 2016). Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson is a beautifully dark portrait of Victorian London that I believe Charles Dickens would feel right…

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