Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event

Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (two novels in one volume)

The night of September 30, 1888, Jack the Ripper took two lives in the Whitechapel district of London. Elizabeth Stride was killed about 1:00 AM. A ten minute walk away, and less than an hour later, Catherine Eddowes was killed. The next day, a letter known as the Saucy Jacky postcard was received at the Central News Agency. The message was meant to taunt the police and perhaps the entire city. The writer, who signed the postcard Jack the Ripper, referred to the killings of the night before as “The Double Event.”

Since the murderer was never caught, fascination with the unsolved mystery has been widespread and enduring. But what of the women? Who were they? What was life like for them in London of the time period? What were their struggles, their hopes, their regrets? What of the decisions they made in life might have delivered them into the bloody hands of the Ripper? The two novels within this volume, Say Anything But Your Prayers, about the life of Elizabeth Stride, and Of Thimble and Threat, about the life of Catherine Eddowes, give possible answers to these questions.

Say Anything But Your Prayers
The beast of poverty and disease had stalked Elizabeth all her life, waiting for the right moment to take her down. To survive, she listened to the two extremes within herself--Bess, the innocent child of hope, and Liza, the cynical, hard-bitten opportunist. While Bess paints rosy pictures of what lies ahead and Liza warns of dangers everywhere, the beast, in the guise of a man offering something better, circles closer.

Of Thimble and Threat
The story of the intense love between a mother and a child, a story of poverty and loss, fierce independence, and unconquerable will. It is the devastating portrayal of a self-perpetuated descent into Hell, a lucid view into the darkest parts of the human heart.

"Beguiling, suspenseful and often truly nightmarish, Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event comprises a pair of impeccably researched and absorbing novels that draw the reader into a completely believable depiction of 19th Century London.”
—Simon Clark, author of Darkness Demands and Blood Crazy

"In Jack the Ripper Victim Series: The Double Event, Clark’s attention to details of the era reveals a class system where a poor woman alone is all but doomed to an early grave. Readers will come away touched by these profound portraits of desperate women and shocked by not just the crimes which ended in their demise, but the greater crimes of a society that offered them no hope. This book is a must-read; be prepared to be horrified."
—Nancy Kilpatrick, Author of The Power of the Blood series; editor of Danse Macabre and Expiration Date