The Hours Before by Robert Parry

File Size:  4464KB

Print Length:  424 pages

Publication Date:  March 1, 2015

ASIN:  B00ufz10AC

Source:  I read this book free through Amazon Unlimited

Another great read by one of my favorite writers, Robert Parry.  This book  keeps you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.  It is the story of a woman's desperate search for  her daughter.  Her daughter was reported to be dead among other dead members of an occultist group.  The members' charred remains was discovered among the rubble of the building they were living in.  Deborah Peters is the mother of Penelope,  "Poppy" Peters..  Deborah Peters is the ex wife of Hugh Peters, a newspaper tycoon and she is  a very well known and  well loved clairvoyant   Their only daughter, Poppy had recently left home to live with an occultist group that is focused on doomsday and preys on  Europe's wealthiest citizens.  When the bodies of some of this group were found, it was assumed that Poppy was one of the dead.  Hugh accepts that his daughter is dead, but Deborah does not believe that Poppy died in the fire.  Because of her  clairvoyance she just knows deep within her soul  that  her beloved Poppy  is still alive.  

Hugh begins to make Deborah's life a living hell.   He blames her for influencing Poppy to make bad choices.  He makes vicious accusations and does his best to turn admirers against her.    He goes as far as claiming that she is insane.  With his influential power, he makes sure that there is something on every paper's front page on a daily basis.  He even employs a particularly despicable reporter to follow her around.  The reporter manages to always be around to take photo's  of her for the newspapers when she is looking her worst. To make matters worse, Deborah  is also  betrayed by her best friend, because she marries Hugh.  Deborah eventually hits rock bottom.

Deborah is determined to find  her daughter.  Along the way she meets Herman "Manny" Grace, a magician.  Manny is drawn to her and doesnt know why, but he  gets deeply involved with finding Poppy.  Over time Deborah runs out of things to sell and she becomes destitute and a mere shell of the wealthy lady she used to be.  Just as Manny gets information about Poppy's possible whereabouts,  he and Deborah are separated and he cannot get in touch with her. In an effort to find out if Poppy is at Castle Schloss Lethe, Manny makes the decision  on his own to infiltrate the group and pretend to be a new follower.  What he discovers is taking place  in this remote place is shocking

This is an awesome Gothic Victorian  tale.  It is a nice, long read that will keep you engaged from the first page until the end.  As you read this book you will have a hundred questions, but I assure you that you will not be disappointed with the answers.  And, all of them will be answered.

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The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Title:  The Alienist
Author:  Caleb Carr
Publisher:  Bantam Books
Date:  1994
Pages:  597
Source:  Purchased
ISBN: 0533572997

The Alienist takes you into the dark, sleezy life of New York City during the late 1800's.  This dark world was kept secret in the 1800's and you rarely hear about it today.  But, there is no doubt that it existed and that life was scary and difficult for the people that lived in this dark world.  In The Alienist, there is a serial killer wandering through this dark world and he is targeting young boys.  But, not just any boys, he is focused on boys that are selling their bodies to survive.  The government and the police are ignoring the killings.  They do not want the public to know this part of NYC even exists, so they just sit back and hope that it will go away.
But, not everyone is content to just sit back and ignore these killings.  After all the victims are children. No matter what type of life they are living, they deserve protection from this evil killer. There is an Alienist in the city that wants the killer stopped.  His name is Kreizler and he is what today is known as a Psychologist.  Kreizler forms a group  of friends to try and stop this killer.  The group initially consists of Moore who is a New York Times Reporter and Sarah who is a Secretary at the Police Department.  The little group eventually expands to include Kreizlers servants and a couple of ex Police Officers. This group will take you into the belly of this dark world and it is sometimes very graphic because when this killer kills a victim, it is very gruesome and even worse because his victims are children.
Kriezler feels sure that the killer is not insane. But, he needs to meet the killer and talk with him before deciding if he is insane or not. He believes that something occured in the killers childhood that made him this way.  Therefore, Kreizler is driven to find him so that he can make an effort to answer this age old question.  Is this killer insane or just evil?

"Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part  (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our mind." William James, The Principles of Psychology

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The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Title :  The Thirteenth Tale
Author:  Diane Setterfield
Publisher:  Atria Books
Date:  2006
Source:  Purchased
Pages:  708

My Review:
Ahhh! I do not really know where to begin in reviewing this book because there are so very many great things to be said about it.  The first thing that comes to mind, are the many different paths that it takes the reader down.  It will keep you guessing for all 708 glorious pages.  Just when you think you have something figured out, there comes along another unforeseen twist.
The characters are awesome!  Each of them have such depth that they become real and leap from the pages right  into your reality.  This story is being narrated by a lovely girl named Margaret.  Margaret is a bibliophile, a biographer, and in a way she is also a detective.  She is writing the life story of the world's most beloved authoress, Ms Winter.  Along the way, Margaret gets herself caught in to the  mysterious past of Ms Winters.  Not only is Margaret writing the biography , but she is also trying to solve the mystery that she has gotten herself mixed up in.  All the while she is lost in Ms Winter's story, she is also dealing with her own personal demons.
You will form many, many questions along the way, but not to worry because they will all be answered in the end.  Don't you just hate to read a book that leaves you hanging?  Well, The Thirteenth Tale will not do that.  Every mystery that is uncovered during this story will be answered.
You will not be disappointed with this book!  It has something new to discover around every corner!

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The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

Title:  The Meaning of Night

Author:  Michael Cox

Publisher:  W.W. Norton & Company

Date Published:  2007

Genre:  Gothic Victorian

Pages:  703

Source:  Purchased from Amazon

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Resonant with echoes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, Cox's richly imagined thriller features an unreliable narrator, Edward Glyver, who opens his chilling "confession" with a cold-blooded account of an anonymous murder that he commits one night on the streets of 1854 London. That killing is mere training for his planned assassination of Phoebus Daunt, an acquaintance Glyver blames for virtually every downturn in his life. Glyver feels Daunt's insidious influence in everything from his humiliating expulsion from school to his dismal career as a law firm factotum. The narrative ultimately centers on the monomaniacal Glyver's discovery of a usurped inheritance that should have been his birthright, the byzantine particulars of which are drawing him into a final, fatal confrontation with Daunt. Cox's tale abounds with startling surprises that are made credible by its scrupulously researched background and details of everyday Victorian life. Its exemplary blend of intrigue, history and romance mark a stand-out literary debut. Cox is also the author of M.R. James, a biography of the classic ghost-story writer.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

My Review:

Wow! This is THE Best Book I have read in a long time, possibly one of the Best of this genre I will ever read!  I will even go beyond what others are saying in comparing him to Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, etc., and say that in many ways he is Better!

This is Edward Glyver's story, or rather it is Edward Glyver aka Edward Glapthorn's story and it is told by him.  It starts out with him commiting a murder and the excitement just builds from there.  Edward Glyver believes his birthright has been stolen and he is obssessed with regaining it.  There is almost nothing he will not do to get one step closer to his claim.  Even though Edward has a dark spot in his character, your heart will still go out to him.  He has been ecieved by almost everyone he ever loved.  Everytime he finds happiness, he seems to be struck down.  The things this gentleman edures is enough to drive anyone mad.  Even though he is full of revenge and teeter tottering on the brink of madness, he has a good, kind heart in his chest.  He has just enough goodness within him to cause you to fall in love with him  Edward is truly a man after my heart.  He is a bibliophile, and a photographer.  I love old photography and I loved reading about his photographic endeavors.  I also loved the history in this story.  It is full of it, and anything that needs more explaining is included in a footnote.

I was sad to finish this book, because I wanted more!  But, guess what! He has a sequel and the name of it is The Glass of Time, which I am now devouring. 

Quotes from the Book:
"AFTER KILLING THE RED-HAIRED MAN, I TOOK MYSELF OFF TO QUINN'S for an oyster supper.  It had been suprisingly-almost laughably-easy."

"The first word I ever heard used to describe myself was:  resourceful."

Sadly, I just found that Michael Cox died in March of 2009.  It is a shame that we will not have any new material from him.  But, thank goodness he finished these two books.  I think The Meaning of Night was a fufillment of a life long dream.  When he found out that he was ill, he decided to to write the book he had always wantd to write.

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The Arrow Chest by Robert Parry

Amazon's Description


London, 1876. The painter Amos Roselli is in love with his life-long friend and model, the beautiful Daphne - and she with him - until one day she is discovered by another man, a powerful and wealthy industrialist. What will happen when Daphne realises she has sacrificed her happiness to a loveless marriage? What will happen when the artist realises he has lost his most cherished source of inspiration? And how will they negotiate the ever-increasing frequency of strange and bizarre events that seem to be driving them inexorably towards self-destruction. Here, amid the extravagant Neo-Gothic culture of Victorian England, the iconic poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ blends with mysterious and ghostly glimpses of Tudor history. Romantic, atmospheric and deeply dark.






Title:  The Arrow Chest
Author:  Robert Parry
Publisher:  Create Space
Date:  January 2011
Version:  Kindle
Pages:  342

My Review:

I just finished this book about 5 minutes ago and I am already wanting more! I did not want it to end! This is the first book I have read by Robert Parry, and I can promise that it will not be the last.  From the very first page, I was in awe!  Robert Parry has managed to write a Victorian Gothic story in the 21st century that rivals many of the great authors of the 19th century.  It is very beautifully written.  If I did not know better, I would never have suspected that it was not written in the Victorian era.

This story is an intermingling of the Victorian Era and the 16th century tragedy of Anne Boleyn.  How is that possible?  Well, you need to read it to find out!  It starts out with the discovery of Anne Boleyn's bones under the floor of a church along with an arrow chest.  From there the story consists  of the weaving of the two centuries together.  Had I not read the book, I would not have thought it could be done.  It seems an impossible combination, but, Robert Parry has managed to combine my two favorite genre's together, Victorian gothic and historical fiction. So, I am giving this my couldn't put it down rating and adding to that, because I will be reading more of Robert Parry's work!

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