Jack Sheppard: A Romance

In 18th-century London, Jack Sheppard rises from apprentice carpenter to the most daring house-breaker the city has ever known. With nerves of steel and an almost supernatural gift for escape, he scales walls, picks locks, and confounds the authorities until they don't know whether they're hunting a man or a myth. Ainsworth's novel throws open the doors of flash houses, debtors' prisons, and the grimy taverns of early Georgian London, painting a world where the line between criminal and hero blurs dangerously. Jack's desperate flight from the infamous Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker who both protects and betrays the underworld, propels the narrative toward a fate as inevitable as it is tragic. Published in 1839, Jack Sheppard caused a sensation that left Dickens' Oliver Twist eating its dust. It launched the Newgate novel into the stratosphere and cemented Ainsworth's reputation as the master of historical romance's wilder shores. The prose cracks with dark energy and dark humor, gleefully thumbing its nose at respectability. This is a book for readers who want their historical fiction with a criminal's audacity, who believe the best stories are told from the wrong side of the law.