COPYRIGHT INFO
The Victorian Mystery Megapack is copyright © 2012 by Wildside Press LLC. Cover art © Konradbak / Fotolia.
For more information, see www.wildsidepress.com,
or contact us through the Wildside Press forums at:
http://movies.ning.com/forum.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Over the last year, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has proved to be one of our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!).
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A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS
The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards mentioned above.
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
The Adventure Megapack
The Christmas Megapack
The Second Christmas Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Martian Megapack
The Military Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
The Mystery Megapack
The Science Fiction Megapack
The Second Science Fiction Megapack
The Third Science Fiction Megapack
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The Andre Norton Megapack
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
The theme of this Megapack is classic mystery and crime fiction from the Victorian era. We have taken the liberty of extending the qualifying publication dates to the end of World War I, since that event marked more of a turning point in world literature than the advent of the Edwardian Age. Certainly the spirit of Victorian crime fiction continued beyond Queen Victoria.
This volume contains 25 stories and 2 bonus novels, offering hours of reading pleasure.
SHERLOCK HOLMES
We include only one Sherlock Holmes story herewith, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works are readily available; if you haven’t read them, we urge you to do so.
Experienced Holmesians will surely pardon us for having fun with Sherlock and including a few rare parodies and pastiches, as they are “of the era.” There is even a Holmes-Raffles “crossover” story, as the son of Sherlock Holmes (who also happens to be the grandson of A.J. Raffles) has an adventure in New York City, as only John Kendrick Bangs could tell it! (Bangs also contributes an adventure featuring Mrs. Raffles.)
BEYOND HOLMES
Other stories of interest include two of Violet Strange’s cases, penned by Anna Katharine Green (who has the distinction of being the first American woman to write detective novels); “The Donnington Affair,” by G.K. Chesterton and Max Pemberton, a rare Father Brown mystery which is omitted from most collections of Chesterton’s works; and “The Lenton Croft Robberies,” by Arthur Morrison, the first of “Martin Hewitt’s Chronicles,” which were originally collected in 1896.
We also include a humorous tale of a burglar by W.S. Gilbert (half of the Gilbert & Sullivan team, of whose collaborative work we remain fond), and Wilkie Collins’ enduring classic, The Moonstone, which every mystery fancier must read at some point.
Enjoy!
—The Editors
THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES, by Arthur Morrison
Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will case, “Bartley v. Bartley and others,” which occupied the Probate Court for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest rarely accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division of the same court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff’s side—evidence that took the other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more
