Drood: A Novel - Softcover

Simmons, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316037583 ISBN 13: 9780316037587

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2009

Synopsis

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.
Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying?
Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Simmons is the award-winning author of several novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Olympos and The Terror. He lives in Colorado.

From AudioFile

Wilkie Collins, friend and sometime collaborator of Charles Dickens, listens with horror to Dickens's account of meeting a purported master of the black arts. Through an opium haze, Collins endeavors to find him, even as his hatred for his friend grows. Simon Prebble's impeccable speech is the perfect match for this sinister Dickensian tale. He effortlessly shifts among the story's many characters, imbuing each not only with a voice and dialect, but also with a distinct personality. Collins's increasingly frequent bouts of paranoia sound convincingly terror-filled, without seeming "performed." And Dickens's self-important growls of pretension lead the listener to dislike him as much as Collins does. Narrative passages in the complicated plot benefit from Prebble's natural speech patterns--clear, very British, and so suited to the text as to sound as if he wrote them himself. R.L.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0316037583
• ISBN 13: 9780316037587
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1280