The photographs are richly supplemented by detailed commentary and illustrations.

    Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is the powerful epic story of five royal granddaughters of Queen Victoria, who reigned over the end of their empires, the destruction of their families, and the tumult of the twentieth centuryHere are the stories of Alexandra, whose faith in Rasputin and tragic end have become the stuff of legend; Marie, the flamboyant and eccentric queen who battled her way through a life of intrigues and was also the mother of two Balkan queens and of the scandalous Carol II of Romania; Victoria Eugenie, Spain's very English queen who, like Alexandra, introduced hemophilia into her husband's family---with devastating consequences for her marriage; Maud, King Edward VII's daughter, who was independent Norway's reluctant queen; and Sophie, Kaiser Wilhelm II's much maligned sister, daughter of an emperor and herself the mother of no less than three kings and a queen, who ended her days in bitter exile.Using never before published letters, memoirs, diplomatic documents, secondary sources, and interviews with descendents of the subjects, Julia Gelardi's Born to Rule is an astonishing and memorable work of popular history.

    This period of mid-Victorian London covers a huge span: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan.

    Arthur Conan Doyle provides a rich and fascinating set of mysteries to challenge his sleuth in the new stories. As before, Watson is the superb narrator, and the magic remains unchanged and undimmed.This fascinating volume also includes the collection His Last Bow. In the title story, we are told how Sherlock Holmes is brought out of retirement to help the government fight the German threat at the approach of the First World War. Here are two sparkling sets of stories featuring the greatest detective of them all.

    Wells, to Russian newspaper serials and Chinese martial arts novels, The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana is a truly exhaustive look at every aspect of fantastic literature in the days of Queen Victoria.

    Oh, not the mere love spells used by country folk, but real sorcery capable of thwarting ambitions and destroying life. In Sorcery & Cecilia, a great deal is happening in London and the country this season. For starters, there's the witch who tried to poison Kate at the Royal College of Wizards. There's also the man who seems to be spying on Cecelia. (Though he's not doing a very good job of it--so just what are his intentions?) And then there's Oliver. Ever since he was turned into a tree, he hasn't bothered to tell anyone where he is. Clearly, magic is a deadly and dangerous business. And the girls might be in fear for their lives . . . if only they weren't having so much fun! Cecy and Kate are determined to discover who the stranger with the lethal chocolate is and how to put a stop to the malevolent flow of sorcery before anyone else can be harmed. But there are forces at work that are equally determined to put a stop to them...In The Grand Tour, Kate and Cecy and their new husbands, Thomas and James, are off on a Grand Tour. Their plans? To leisurely travel about the Continent, take in a few antiquities, and--of course--purchase fabulous Parisian wardrobes.But once they arrive in France, mysterious things start to happen. Cecy receives a package containing a lost coronation treasure, Thomas's valet is assaulted, and Kate loses a glove. Soon it becomes clear that they have stumbled upon a dastardly, magical plot to take over Europe. Now the four newlyweds must embark on a daring chase to thwart the evil conspiracy. And there's no telling the trouble they'll get into along the way. For when you mix Kate and Cecy and magic, you never know what's going to happen next!

    Her lovely singing voice and good looks lead her to her great ambition - to go on the stage and see her name top of the bill. She becomes a music hall star both in her native town and in the south, after an appearance in the theatre at Brighton - she even performs in Paris, to tremendous acclaim. But when her first love, an ambitious shoemaker in her home town, becomes engaged to someone else Poppy is devastated. She disappears, believing that she will never return to her life of stardom. But her fame cannot be kep a secret...

    But amidst the crowds of London's Crystal Palace, Passion finds herself discreetly, yet insistently, pursued by a sensual gentleman who awakens her long-supressed desires. After a loveless marriage of restrained propriety, Passion abandons herself to true bliss for the first time.Intoxicated by his encounter with the beautiful stranger, Mark Randolph Hawkmore, Earl of Langley, cannot wait to see her again. As a series of rapturous rendezvous follows, he and his mystery lover find something rare and wonderful blossoming between them. But a blackmail scheme against the Earl threatens to destroy everything. As a scandal brews, each will have to choose between duty and desire...their love for their families—and their love for each other.

    Henry Mayhew vowed "to publish the history of a people, from the lips of the people themselves — giving a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials and their sufferings, in their own 'unvarnished' language." With his collaborators, Mayhew explored hundreds of miles of London streets in the 1840s and 1850s, gathering thousands of pages of testimony from the city's humbler residents. Their stories revealed aspects of city life virtually unknown to literate society.A sprawling, four-volume history resulted from Mayhew's investigations. This extract focuses on the criminal class--pickpockets, prostitutes, rag pickers, and vagrants, whose true stories of degradation, horror, and desperation rival Dickensian fiction. A classic reference source for sociologists, historians, and criminologists, Mayhew's work is immensely readable. As Thackeray wrote, these urban vignettes conjure up "a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it."

    The story begins in the years before WWII when a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). Beautiful and accomplished, Sayuri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man who is out of her reach (Ken Watanabe).The Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook explores the intricate process of re-creating the period and world of the geisha. Special sections showcase production design, makeup, choreography, and costumes, featuring kimonos created especially for the movie by five-time Oscar®-nominated costume designer Colleen Atwood. Sidebars throughout also provide fascinating historical background on the geisha culture.

    Then a private investigator brings her news of a large inheritance???and a house in Tallulah, Mississippi, from a grandmother she can barely remember. Carley visits Tallulah and the serenity of small-town living charms her into staying and opening a bistro there. But Carley finds more than she bargained for in Tallulah: along with faith, self-worth, romance???a murder mystery that threatens her newfound happiness. From bestselling author Lawana Blackwell.

    Using his own drawings, diagrams and photographs, author Trevor Yorke explains all aspects of the Victorian house and provides a definitive guide for those who are renovating, tracing the history of their own house, or are simply interested in this notable period of history. The book provides a background to different phases of design throughout the Victorian age from 1830 to 1902. Various areas are considered in detail, including: the layout and use of rooms; fixtures and fittings; sources of heat and lighting; domestic machinery such as kitchen ranges and laundry equipment; gardens and outbuildings. Also included is a quick reference time chart with drawings of the period details that can help date them and a glossary of the more unfamiliar architectural terms.

    Carefully researched, accurately rendered illustrations depict opera capes, frock coats, trousers, top hats, and knitted swimwear for men. The ladies' styles include narrow-skirted walking suits, bathing outfits that completely cover the figure, and billowing bloomers for bicycling. 29 black-and-white illustrations.

    By the age of 26, he had been appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, linking Bristol to London. His love of steamships led him to build a series of revolutionary vessels, including the Great Britain—the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. Illustrated with a wealth of blueprints, drawings, and rare photographs, this new biography tracks the life and achievements of this Victorian-era genius. A fascinating portrait of ambition and innovation, Brunel provides ample evidence to support the claim that Brunel was indeed “the man who built the world.”

    The body is identified as that of twenty-five year old Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth and final victim of Jack the Ripper. But who can be really sure it is her? And if it is, then what strange course of events might lead this bright, attractive young girl to such a fatal meeting?The Seduction of Mary Kelly is a story of courage and determination, of villainy, madness and murder; tragic and comic by turns, but above all it's the story of Mary Kelly's intriguing journey from the poverty of a Welsh mining village, to the heights of London society, and finally to the worst street in Whitechapel - and an astonishing meeting with the serial killer the world has come to know as Jack the Ripper.

    When a ship is wrecked in a storm off the Portland coast, a taciturn stonecutter by the name of Joseph Rushmore sends his rescue dog to haul in plunder. What it brings instead is a baby in a cradle. As Joseph's wife has just given birth to a stillborn child, the couple decide to keep the infant girl. The Rushmores never tell their adopted daughter the truth about her origins, but on the death of Joseph and his wife, when the girl, Joanna, is 16, she finds herself at the mercy of her abusive and violent Rushmore cousins. She is rescued by a middle-aged sea captain, Tobias Darsham, who is making a pilgrimage to visit his wife's grave. When Tobias suggests that he and Joanna should get married, the desperate girl feels she has no choice but to agree. However, soon after the wedding, Tobias gets a nasty shock when he discovers Joanna's childhood cradle - because he carved it himself for his daughter. Horrified at the thought that he might have married his own daughter, Tobias fakes his own death and sets sail for Australia, leaving Joanna in the care of his second-in-command, Alexander Morcant. Finding themselves mutually dependent, Alexander and Joanna's initial animosity gradually dissolves into a passionate attraction. But will she ever discover the truth about her origins?

    Over the next three decades, London began its transformation into a new kind of city—one of unprecedented size, dynamism, and technological advance. This highly evocative account delves into the lives and textures of the booming city, from the glittering new department stores of Oxford Street to the synagogues and sweatshops of the East End, from bohemian bars and gaudy music halls to the well-kept gardens of Edwardian suburbia. It shows how the city, as a result of massive urban migration and construction, took on its shape; and how the advent of novelties such as electricity, the motor car, the telephone, socialism, democracy, and female emancipation transformed the lives of city dwellers. Brought to life is an age when Londoners spoke with excitement of the New Journalism, the New Woman, the New Aristocracy, and the New Liberalism, and when the nation hurled itself into war, realizing the cataclysmic consequences of this rush to modernity.

    The period had started with the partition of Poland and the absorption of its territories into the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires; it would end with the first large-scale outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and the imposition in Russia of strong anti-Semitic legislation. In the years between, a traditional society accustomed to an autonomous way of life would be transformed into one much more open to its surrounding cultures, yet much more confident of its own nationalist identity. In The Jews of Eastern Europe, Israel Bartal traces this transformation and finds in it the roots of Jewish modernity.

    Eighteenth-century needlework newsletters inspire this anthology of favorite Victorian era knitting and crochet projects that include instructions for creating an assortment of doilies, household items, knitted socks, waistcoats (vests) and white-on-white Mountmellick embroidery, drawn-thread work, and smocking projects.