The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

A chance meeting with a woman dressed in white on a moonlit road pulls a drawing master into a conspiracy over identity and inheritance. Told through overlapping testimonies, like evidence assembled for a trial.

Wilkie Collins

A diamond taken from an Indian shrine disappears from an English country house, and the investigation runs for two years. Widely considered the first true detective novel in English.

Wilkie Collins

A beautiful young wife with a spotless reputation and a past she has worked very hard to bury. The defining sensation novel, built on bigamy, false identity and a nephew who will not stop asking questions.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

A woman leaves her husband and children, then returns in disguise as governess to her own family. Around that domestic ruin sits a murder and a man convicted for a crime he did not commit.

Ellen Wood

Dickens died with this novel half finished, leaving a disappearance, an opium haunted choirmaster and no solution. Read it for the atmosphere, and for the puzzle nobody has ever been able to close.

Charles Dickens