Washoe County Library System

"A real-life detective story, investigating how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction, writing books casting new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors' darkest secrets."--Publisher's description.

First published in 1897, Dracula has had a long and multifaceted afterlife - one rivaling even its immortal creation; yet Bram Stoker has remained a hovering specter in this pervasive mythology. In Something in the Blood, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who birthed an undying cultural icon, painting an astonishing portrait of the age in which Stoker was born - a time when death was no metaphor but a constant...

A portrait of nineteenth-century actress Ellen Ternan, the woman who was the mistress of Charles Dickens, describing her secret relationship with the author

Describes the abuse inflicted upon the novelist from her Victorian family where sexual violence was common.

A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers. " Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself...

New in the Little People, Big Dreams series, discover the remarkable life of Jane Austen, the British novelist, in this true story of her life. Little Jane grew up in a big family that loved learning and she often read from her father's library. In her teenage years she began to write in bound notebooks and craft her own novels. As an adult, Jane secretly created stories that shone a light on the British upper classes and provided a witty social commentary...

"The modern romance novel is elevated to a subject of serious study in this addictively readable biography of pioneering celebrity author Elinor Glyn. Society darling Elinor Glyn shocked her English peers with the 1907 publication of Three Weeks, an intensely erotic novel that launched her to international fame and infamy. Historian Hilary A. Hallett traces Glyn's meteoric rise for the first time, beginning where most romance novels end: with her...