The Moonstone

Wilkie Collins

Feb 2013 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Rachel's eighteenth birthday is celebrated with a large party. She wears the Moonstone on her dress that evening for all to see, including some Indian jugglers who have come to entertain. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. Later that night, the diamond is stolen from Rachel's bedroom, and a period of turmoil, unhappiness, misunderstandings, and ill-luck ensues. The bemused butler, the love-stricken housemaid, the enigmatic detective Sergeant Cuff, the drug-addicted scientist-- each speculate on the mystery, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem, and nothing can be taken for granted.

About the author

William Wilkie Collins (1824–89) was, unlike many nineteenth-century writers, a great literary success within his own lifetime. At one stage he rose to be the highest-paid Victorian writer, even eclipsing the earnings of his mentor, Charles Dickens. He had several careers in his youth, but it was writing novels that brought him fame, boosted by a certain notoriety for what many perceived as his scandalous and immoral private life.