Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 11
1838
In this eleventh installment of Bulwer-Lytton's ambitious series, the corridors of English high society crackle with menace. A marriage nearly secured, a mysterious stranger returned from madness, and secrets coiled like vipers in the family tree, these are the ingredients of a perfectly improper Victorian catastrophe. When death strikes suddenly and mysteriously, the web of intrigue tightens around the surviving players, each harboring truths that could shatter reputations and end futures. The resolution offers redemption for some, ruin for others, and a hopeful wedding that suggests love, against all odds, can conquer the mysteries that haunt the human heart. This is Bulwer-Lytton at his operatic best: prose that drips with Gothic atmosphere, characters torn between passion and propriety, and a narrative engine driven by the secrets we keep from those we claim to love.
