Books with title The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice

"The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice" by Wilkie Collins. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel? Is The Haunted Hotel the tale of a haunting -- or the tale of a crime? The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice --- or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work? (Jacketless library hardcover.

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist and playwright, best known for The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Haunted Hotel is "unusually horrific" for Collins and, in addition to supernatural elements, contains detective procedures and an insurance fraud relying on substituted identity. This volume also contains My Lady's Money, largely concerned with the eventual marriage of the heroine, the 'Exhaustive System of Reasoning' and Old Sharon, the pipe-smoking detective who works out the problem by deduction, are both possible influences on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

“Another gripping novel from Classic Detective Presents”…Lord Montbarry breaks off his engagement to Agnes Lockwood to marry the Countess Narona. The couple end a continental tour in Venice where they live reclusively in a large, decaying palace. They are accompanied by Baron Rivar, brother of the Countess, and by Ferrari, their courier.Agnes learns from Montbarry's brother, Henry Westwick, that Mountbarry, whose life was insured for £10,000 in favour of his wife, has died of bronchitis. The courier has disappeared without trace although Ferrari's wife receives an anonymous note containing £1,000. The insurance companies carefully investigate but find no evidence that Mountbarry died other than by natural causes.The palace is refurbished as a fashionable hotel, and the Westwick family arrange to meet there. Without realising that they are sleeping in the room where Montbarry died, three of his family separately experience insomnia, nightmares or nauseous smells. Agnes awakes in the night to see a disembodied head descending from the ceiling. A real head is discovered the next day decomposing in a secret compartment in the room above. Henry finds a set of gold false teeth which are later confirmed as Montbarry's by his dentist.The Countess has also come to Venice, compelled by Destiny. She writes a ghost story in the form of a play which is in effect a confession of Montbarry's murder by herself and the Baron. Ferrari, dying of bronchitis, had agreed to assume the identity of Montbarry to perpetrate an insurance fraud in exchange for the £1,000 sent to his wife. Montbarry's body was disposed of by acid but the head hidden in the secret compartment. Agnes and Henry return to England and are married privately. They never discuss details of the confession.

When Lord Montbarry dies suddenly in his Venice palace, and his courier goes missing, suspicion is instantly thrown on his new wife, the beautiful Countess Narona, who has collected his life insurance and fled to America. Montbarry’s former fiance´ Agnes, still harbouring feelings for him, and Henry Westwick, Montbarry’s younger brother, decide to investigate this tragedy and head for the palace, now a hotel. Not long after their arrival they experience strange and unsettling occurrences, and the circumstances of Montbarry’s death begin to unravel...

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's works appeared first in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words and they collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s, but began suffering from gout. Taking opium for the pain grew into an addiction. In the 1870s and 1880s his writing quality declined with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between Caroline Graves and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children

Excerpt from The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice; To Which Is Added My Lady's MoneyVery well. Open the house door for me with out making any noise, and leave the lady in undisturbed possession of the consulting-room. When she gets tired of waiting, you know what to tell her. If she asks when I am expected to return, say that I dine at my club, and spend the evening at the theater. N ow then, softly, Thomas! If your shoes creak, I am a lost man.He noiselessly led the way into the hall, fol lowed by the servant on tip-toe.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Some of Collins's works appeared first in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words and they collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s, but began suffering from gout. Taking opium for the pain grew into an addiction. In the 1870s and 1880s his writing quality declined with his health. Collins was critical of the institution of marriage: he split his time between Caroline Graves and his common-law wife Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.

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This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale.

Wilkie COLLINS (1824-1889), elder son of the landscape painter William Collins. He was educated at private schools in London, but gained his real education on a two-year tour of Italy with his family (1836-38). He worked briefly for a tea importer and was later called to the bar, but never practised. His first book, a biography of his father, was published in 1848, and he later wrote numerous articles and short stories for Dickens´s periodicals “Household Words” and “All the Year Round” and for other journals, a book about a walking tour in Cornwall, and many moderately successful plays; but his reputation rests on his novels. His first was “Antonina” (1850), a historical novel about the fall of Rome; but with “Basil” (1852) he found his true metier as an expert in mystery, suspense, and crime. His finest work, the Novel of Sensation, was written in the 1860s, when he produced “The Woman in White” (1860), “No Name” (1862), “Armadale” (1866), and “The Moonstone” (1868). Collins wrote the first full-length detective stories in English, and set a mould for the genre which has lasted for a century. He excelled at constructing ingenious and meticulous plots, and made interesting experiments in narrative technique.