Bøger af Vaughn Entwistle

When Oscar Wilde answers an urgent summons to the British Museum Reading Room, he finds his friend, Arthur Conan Doyle, in a state of profound agitation. The Scots author has discovered a mysterious Casebook #5 entitled: The Faerie Vortex. The Casebook contains a highly fantastical story about a trip the two authors made to the seaside town of Darvington in response to a letter from a woman who claims her daughters had been abducted by faeries. Although the trip took place a year ago, neither man has any memory of the journey, although proof has been pasted into the Casebook in the form of cancelled train tickets, a photograph of a little girls' picnic (complete with faery visitors), and even a time-yellowed map of the lost village of Wyrme-Hallow. But most worrying of all is the front page clipping of the Darvington newspaper describing Wilde's arrest for the suspected abduction and murder of the two young girls. As the horrified authors debate the need to revisit Darvington to unravel the mystery, the two are torn between the need to find out the truth but terrified that Oscar Wilde risks facing murder charges if they return. Plus, as Wilde himself vexingly points out, "How can we return to a place we've never been to?"

It never had life . . . but now it must die . . .As a girl of 18, Mary Shelley''s imagination birthed the nameless monster that would make her name famous. But since that night of apocalyptic storms at the Villa Diodati and the dark nativity of her hideous progeny, Mary''s life has been a tedious narrative of grief and loss: a dead husband, a dead sister and three dead children. Now in middle age, Mary suffers headaches from the brain tumour that will soon end her life. Seeking relief from her monster''s malign curse, Mary travels from London to the Somerset estate of Andrew Crosse, the gentleman scientist who inspired her Dr. Frankenstein. Mary has come in search of an electrical cure, hoping that the same dread engine that raised her monster can now lay that ghost to rest.

Lord Geoffrey Thraxton is notorious in Victorian society-a Byronesque rakehell with a reputation as the "wickedest man in London." After surviving a pistol duel, Thraxton boasts his contempt for death and insults the attending physician. It is a mistake he will regret, for Silas Garrette is a deranged sociopath and chloroform-addict whose mind was broken on the battlefields of Crimea. Oblivious to the danger, Thraxton''s pursuit of idle pleasure leads him through the fog shrouded streets of London-from champagne soirees in the mummy room of the British Museum, to its high-class brothels and low-class opium dens. But when Thraxton falls in love with a mysterious woman who haunts Highgate Cemetery by night, he unwittingly provides the murderous doctor with the perfect means to punish a man with no fear of death.

The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read like a volatile cocktail of Sherlock Holmes-meets-the-X-Files with a dash of horror and a whiff of London fog. Conan Doyle assumes the mantle of his fictional consulting detective and recruits a redoubtable Watson in the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, who brings to the sleuthing duo a razor-keen mind, an effervescent wit, and an outrageous sense of fashion. Together, two of the greatest minds in Victorian England solve bizarre murders, unravel diabolical plots and unearth long-buried mysteries-each with a paranormal twist.The Revenant of Thraxton Hall "My murder will take place in a darkened s├⌐ance room-shot twice in the chest." The words are a premonition related to Arthur Conan Doyle when he answers a summons for help from a woman who identifies herself only as "a Spiritualist Medium of some renown." The house is a fashionable address in London. The woman''s voice is young, cultured and ethereal. But even with his Holmesian powers of observation, Conan Doyle can only guess at her true identity, for the interview takes place in total darkness. Suspicious of being drawn into a web of charlatanism, the author is initially reluctant. However, the mystery deepens when he returns the next day and finds the residence abandoned.1893 is a tumultuous year in the life of the 34-year old Conan Doyle: his alcoholic father dies in an insane asylum, his wife is diagnosed with galloping consumption, and his most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, is killed off in The Adventure of the Final Problem. It is a move that backfires, making the author the most hated man in England. But despite the fact that his personal life is in turmoil, the lure of an intrigue proves irresistible. Conan Doyle assumes the mantle of his fictional consulting detective and recruits a redoubtable Watson in the Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, who brings to the sleuthing duo a razor-keen mind, an effervescent wit, and an outrageous sense of fashion. "The game is a afoot" as the two friends board a steam train for Northern England to attend the first meeting of the Society for Psychical Research, held at the mysterious medium''s ancestral home of Thraxton Hall-a brooding Gothic pile swarmed by ghosts. Here, they encounter an eccentric m├⌐lange of seers, scientists, psychics and skeptics-each with an inflated ego and a motive for murder. As the night of the fateful s├⌐ance draws near, the two writers find themselves entangled in a Gordian Knot that would confound even the powers of a Sherlock Holmes to unravel-how to solve a murder before it is committed."

The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read like a volatile cocktail of Sherlock Holmes-meets-the-X-Files with a dash of steam punk and a whiff of London fog. Conan Doyle assumes the mantle of his fictional consulting detective and recruits a redoubtable Watson in the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, who brings to the sleuthing duo a razor-keen mind, an effervescent wit, and an outrageous sense of fashion. Together, two of the greatest minds in Victorian England solve bizarre murders, unravel diabolical plots and unearth long-buried mysteries-each with a paranormal twist.1895. Victorian England trembles on the verge of anarchy. Handbills plastered across London scream of revolution and insurrection. Terrorist bombs are detonating around the Capitol and every foreigner is suspected of being a bomb-throwing Anarchist lurking beneath a cape. Even Palace officials whisper warnings of a coup-de-tat.Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle is summoned from a peaceful dinner in the palm-room of the Tivoli restaurant to the scene of a gruesome crime that has baffled and outraged Scotland Yard''s best. A senior member of Her Majesty''s government has been murdered-assassinated-in the most brutal and savage fashion. The body of his attacker lies several streets away-riddled with pistol bullets that inexplicably failed to stop him from carrying out his lethal mission. More perplexing, one of the attending detectives recognises the dead assassin as Charlie Higginbotham, a local Cockney pickpocket and petty thief. Higginbotham is not just an improbable suspect, but an impossible suspect, for the young detective collared Charlie for the murder of his wife and watched him take the drop two weeks previously, hanged at Newgate Prison.Conan Doyle calls in his friend Oscar Wilde for assistance and soon the two authors find themselves swept up in an investigation so bizarre it defies conventional wisdom and puts the lives of their loved ones, the Nation, and even the Monarch herself in dire peril.The murders continue, committed by a shadowy cadre of seemingly unstoppable assassins. As the sinister plot unravels, an implausible theory becomes the only possible solution: someone is reanimating the corpses of executed criminals and sending them shambling through the London fog ... programmed for murder.