The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime

A wonderfully wicked new anthology from the editor of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime

It is the Victorian era and society is both entranced by and fearful of that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides those new- fangled bicycles and doesn't like to be told what to do. And, in crime fiction, such female detectives as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard are out there shadowing suspects, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses, and sometimes committing a lesser crime in order to solve a murder.

In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, Michael Sims has brought together all of the era's great crime-fighting females- plus a few choice crooks, including Four Square Jane and the Sorceress of the Strand.

About The Author

Michael Sims has edited two other collections for Penguin Classics: The Annotated Archy and Mehitable and Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief. His research for the latter inspired The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime. His most recent non-fiction book is Apollo's Fire: A Journey through the Extraordinary Wonders of an Ordinary Day, which National Public Radio chose as one of the Best Science Books of 2007. He is also the author of Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a Library Journal Best Science Book; and Darwin's Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts. His writing has appeared in New Statesman, Gourmet, Orion, the Washington Post, and many other periodicals in the United States and abroad.