Wilkie Collins. Book 2

Wilkie Collins. Book 2: 1. The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice; 2. The Woman in White; 3. Mr Wray’s Cash Box or The Mask and the Mystery — A Christmas Sketch. 


1. The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice  1879

Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel? Is The Haunted Hotel the tale of a haunting or the tale of a crime? The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work? (Jacketless library hardcover.) An eminent doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane? When the letters from Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered. In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies...


2. The Woman in White  (1860)

The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859–1860, and first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of 'sensation novels'.

The woman in white first appears at night on a lonely heath near London and is next seen at a grave-side in Cumberland. Who is she? Where has she come from, and what is her history? She seems alone and friendless, frightened and confused. And it seems she knows a secret - a secret that could bring ruin and shame to a man who will do anything to keep her silent. This famous mystery thriller has excitement, suspense, romance, and a plot that twists and turns on every page.


3. Mr Wray’s Cash Box or The Mask and the Mystery — A Christmas Sketch.   1851 год  

A sentimental story heavily influenced by Dickens's Christmas books and published in a similar format, this was Collins's only attempt to exploit the genre.   Reuben Wray, a retired actor of little note, once worked with the illustrious John Kemble at Drury Lane.  He now earns a precarious living teaching elocution.  He arrives in Tidbury-on-the-Marsh, accompanied by his grand-daughter Annie and Martin Blunt, his clumsy but good-natured assistant.  They had all left Stratford-upon-Avon in a hurry because Mr Wray had made a mask of Shakespeare, his lifelong hero, and believes the authorities are pursuing him.