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Affinity
by Sarah Waters

ISBN 1573228737 (1-57322-873-7)
Softcover, Riverhead Books

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Book summary:
Affinity is a tale of power and possession that Henry James himself might admire. In her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters explored secrets and longing--capping off this lesbian romp with a utopian-socialist vision. Her intricate follow-up is just as sensual but infinitely darker, its moral more difficult to descry. Its stylistic and psychological rewards, however, are visible at every turn, the author's persuasive imagination matched by her gift for storytelling.
In late September 1874, Margaret Prior makes her way through the pentagons of London's Millbank Prison, a place of fearful symmetry and endless corridors. This plain woman on the verge of 30 has come to comfort those behind bars, several of whom Waters brings to instant, sad life. And our Lady Visitor plans to take her role dead seriously, having recovered from two years of nervous indolence in her family's Chelsea house. One person, however, makes her job a passion. Opening an inspection slit (or "eye" as these devices are known), Margaret hears "a perfect sigh, like a sigh in a story." Peering inward, she's confronted by the most erotic of visions--a woman turned toward the sun, caressing her cheek with a forbidden violet: "As I watched, she put the flower to her lips, and breathed upon it, and the purple of the petals gave a quiver and seemed to glow..."
Selina Dawes may indeed have the face of a Crivelli angel, but this medium is in for fraud and assault, her last session having gone very badly indeed. Suffice it to say that the first full encounter between these two very different women is enthralling. "You think spiritualism a kind of fancy," Selina riddles. "Doesn't it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?" And soon enough Margaret receives several viable signs of the supernatural: a locket disappears from her room, flowers mysteriously appear, and her dazzling friend knows everything about her. Strangest of all, Selina seems to love her.
As Margaret records her weekly prison forays, her own past comes into focus, notably her plans to travel to Italy with her first love (who is now her sister-in-law). But her current journal, she convinces herself, is to be very different from her last one, which "took as long to burn as human hearts, they say, do take." Meanwhile, Waters offers a narrative two-for-one, placing Margaret's diary cheek by jowl with Selina's chronicle of her pre-Millbank existence. This dispassionate, staccato record initially suggests that we can separate truth from desire. Or can we? What Waters's haunting creation leaves us with is a more painful reality--that knowledge and belief are entirely different things. --Kerry Fried [via]
More editions of Affinity:
- Affinity: ISBN 1573221562 (1-57322-156-2)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Affinity: ISBN 1573228737 (1-57322-873-7)
  Softcover, Riverhead Books
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791040925 (0-7910-4092-5)
Softcover, Facts on File

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More editions of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:
- Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: ISBN 0791040925 (0-7910-4092-5)
  Softcover, Facts on File
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The Crimson Petal and the White
by Michel Faber

ISBN 1841953237 (1-84195-323-7)
Hardcover, Canongate

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Book summary:
Although it's billed as "the first great 19th-century novel of the 21st century," The Crimson Petal and the White is anything but Victorian. It's the story of a well-read London prostitute named Sugar, who spends her free hours composing a violent, pornographic screed against men. Michel Faber's dazzling second novel dares to go where George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and the works of Charles Dickens could not. We learn about the positions and orifices that Sugar and her clients favour, about her lingering skin condition, and about the suspect ingredients of her prophylactic douches. Still, Sugar believes she can make a better life for herself.
When she is taken up by a wealthy man, the perfumer William Rackham, her wings are clipped and she must balance financial security against the obvious servitude of her position. The physical risks and hardships of Sugar's life (and the even harder "honest" life she would have led as a factory worker) contrast--yet not entirely--with the medical mistreatment of her benefactor's wife, Agnes, and beautifully underscore Faber's emphasis on class and sexual politics.
In theme and treatment, this is a novel that Virginia Woolf might have written, had she been born 70 years later. The language, however, is Faber's own--brisk and elastic--and, after an awkward opening, the plethora of detail he offers (costume, food, manners, cheap stage performances, the London streets) slides effortlessly into his forward-moving sentences. When Agnes goes mad, for instance, "she sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board." Despite its 800-plus pages, The Crimson Petal and the White turns out to be a quick read, since it is truly impossible to put down. --Regina Marler, Amazon.com [via]
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Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters

ISBN 1573229725 (1-57322-972-5)
Softcover, Riverhead Books

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From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Tipping the Velvet and the award-winning Affinity: a spellbinding, twisting tale of a great swindle, of fortunes and hearts won and lost, set in Victorian London among a family of thieves.

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves-fingersmiths-for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives-Gentleman, a somewhat elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud's vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be left to live out her days in a mental hospital. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways. . . . But no one and nothing is as it seems in this > Dickensian novel of thrills and surprises.

The New York Times Book Review has called Sarah Waters a writer of "consummate skill" and The Seattle Times has praised her work as "gripping, astute fiction that feeds the mind and the senses." Fingersmith marks a major leap forward in this young and brilliant career. [via]
More editions of Fingersmith:
- Fingersmith: ISBN 1573222038 (1-57322-203-8)
  Hardcover, Riverhead Books
- Fingersmith: ISBN 1573229725 (1-57322-972-5)
  Softcover, Riverhead Books
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A Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray

ISBN 0385732317 (0-385-73231-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books

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Book summary:
Volume One of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. A 19th century historical novel of England. [via]
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte

ISBN 1416500243 (1-4165-0024-3)
Softcover, Pocket Classics

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"Jane Eyre" is the story of its title character, a poor orphaned girl who comes to live with her aunt where she endures poor treatment from her aunt and cousins. Jane subsequently ships off to Lowood, a Christian boarding school where she endures more horrible conditions. After some time, life becomes more bearable at Lowood for Jane and she eventually finishes her coursework and spends a period of time as a teacher at the school. After leaving Lowood she comes into the employment of Mr. Rochester as a governess at Thornfield Hall. "Jane Eyre" is the story of one woman's struggle to overcome adversity and a classic love story. [via]
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Jane Eyre
by Diana Stewart

ISBN 0817216618 (0-8172-1661-8)
Hardcover, Heinemann/Raintree

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In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester. [via]
More editions of Jane Eyre:
- Jane Eyre: ISBN 0817216618 (0-8172-1661-8)
  Hardcover, Heinemann/Raintree
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Jane Eyre
by Margaret Smith, Charlotte Bronte

ISBN 0460875965 (0-460-87596-5)
Softcover, Tuttle Pub

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, orphaned, penniless, victim to a harsh Aunt, and miserable years at Lowood institution finds love as Governess to the sickly Adele, illegitimate daughter of Mr Rocheste. With their wedding interrupted by the sudden intrusion of Rochester's mad Creole wife, inhabitant of the upper regions of Thornfield Hall for years, Jane flees. Nursed from near-death on the moors by the Revd St John Rivers and his 2 sisters, Jane learns both that they are her cousins and that she is the recipient of some money from her Uncle. On the verge of yielding to River's appeal that she marry him, Jane is prevented by a telepathic appeal from Rochester and returns to the Hall to find the building burned, his wife dead and Rochester blinded. Yet marriage seemsaid in the restoration of his sight. [via]
More editions of Jane Eyre:
- Jane Eyre: ISBN 0460875965 (0-460-87596-5)
  Softcover, Tuttle Pub
Jane Eyre : Oxford World Classics
by Outlet Book Company Staff, Random House Value Publishing Staff

ISBN 0517606100 (0-517-60610-0)
Hardcover, Random House Value Publishing

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More editions of Jane Eyre : Oxford World Classics:
- Jane Eyre : Oxford World Classics: ISBN 0517606100 (0-517-60610-0)
  Hardcover, Random House Value Publishing
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

ISBN 1582346038 (1-58234-603-8)
Softcover, Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA

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Book summary:
It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved. A sparkling debut from Susanna Clarke--and it's not all fairy dust. --Regina Marler [via]
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New Method Supplementary Readers
by D.K. Swan

ISBN 0582538432 (0-582-53843-2)
Softcover, Addison-Wesley

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More editions of New Method Supplementary Readers:
- New Method Supplementary Readers: ISBN 0582538432 (0-582-53843-2)
  Softcover, Addison-Wesley
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Rebel Angels
by Libba Bray

ISBN 0786280875 (0-7862-8087-5)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr

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In this sequel to the Victorian fantasy A Great and Terrible Beauty, Gemma continues to pursue her role as the one destined to bind the magic of the Realms and restore it to the Order--a mysterious group who have been overthrown by a rebellion. Gemma, Felicity and Ann, (her girlfriends at Spence Academy for Young Ladies), use magical power to transport themselves on visits from their corseted world to the visionary country of the Realms, with its strange beauty and menace. There they search for the lost Temple, the key to Gemma's mission, and comfort Pippa, their friend who has been left behind in the Realms. After these visits they bring back magical power for a short time to use in their own world. Meanwhile, Gemma is torn between her attraction to the exotic Kartik, the messenger from the opposing forces of the Rakshana, and the handsome but clueless Simon, a young man of good family who is courting her. The complicated plot thickens when Gemma discovers a woman in Bedlam madhouse who knows where to find the Temple; Ann shows signs of being enamored of Gemma's loutish brother Tom, and their father's addiction to laudanum lands him in an opium den. A large part of the enjoyment of this unusual fantasy comes from the Victorian milieu and its restrictive rules about the behavior of proper young ladies, as contrasted with the unimaginable possibilities of the Realms, where Gemma has power to confront gorgons and ghosts and the responsibility to save a world. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell [via]
More editions of Rebel Angels:
- Rebel Angels: ISBN 0786280875 (0-7862-8087-5)
  Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Tipping the Velvet
by Sarah Waters

ISBN 1573221368 (1-57322-136-8)
Softcover, Tarcher/Putnam

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Book summary:
The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.
Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalizing, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, best friend, and bedmate, Alice, "her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion." Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, their relationship close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know that bliss will come, and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesser author would have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has much more in mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, her Everywoman with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreak to a stint as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother of invention) to keeping house for a brother and sister in the Labour movement. And did I mention her long stint as a plaything in the pleasure palace of a rich Sapphist extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as she is carnal, and even the well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular."
Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried [via]
More editions of Tipping the Velvet:
- Tipping the Velvet: ISBN 1573227889 (1-57322-788-9)
  Softcover, Riverhead Books
- Tipping the Velvet: A Novel: ISBN 1573221368 (1-57322-136-8)
  Softcover, Tarcher/Putnam
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To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis

ISBN 0553575384 (0-553-57538-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)
What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic vraisemblance, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.
Willis is concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realizes that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-traveling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years! [via]
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What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England
by Daniel Pool

ISBN 0671882368 (0-671-88236-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:
From fox-hunting to whist, this lively guide to the intricate manners, mores, social distinctions, sports, games, and sundry peculiarities of 19th-century England is a grand resource for anyone interested in Albion at its most arcane, eccentric, and imperial. Line drawings. [via]
More editions of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England:
- What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life Innineteenth-Century England: ISBN 0671793373 (0-671-79337-3)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
- What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Enland: ISBN 0671882368 (0-671-88236-8)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The World's Great Classics

ISBN 0717200019 (0-7172-0001-9)
Hardcover, Xs Books

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Book summary:
Odyssey, The: The World's Great Classics, by Homer; tr. by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang [via]
More editions of The World's Great Classics:
- The World's Great Classics: ISBN 0717200019 (0-7172-0001-9)
  Hardcover, Xs Books