On Sarah A. Chrisman’s twenty-ninth birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset—ever. She’d heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it. However, Chrisman agreed to try on the garment . . . and found it surprisingly enjoyable. The corset, she realized, was a tool of empowerment—not oppression. After a year of wearing a corset on a daily basis, her waist had gone from thirty-two inches to twenty-two inches, she was experiencing fewer migraines, and her posture improved. She had successfully transformed her body, her dress, and her lifestyle into that of a Victorian woman—and everyone was asking about it. In Victorian Secrets, Chrisman explains how a garment from the past led to a change in not only the way she viewed herself, but also the ways she understood the major differences between the cultures of twenty-first-century and nineteenth-century America. The desire to delve further into the Victorian lifestyle provided Chrisman with new insight into issues of body image and how women, past and present, have seen and continue to see themselves.

Step into the shadowed world of Victorian Secrets, where love and the supernatural collide in a dance of danger and desire. Miss Tabitha Windsor, a governess with a hidden gift for sensing the supernatural, has always lived with caution. At twenty-five, she arrives at the eerie Howick House, guarding her abilities with a fierce resolve. But when she encounters the brooding Viscount Nathaniel—a man who sends shivers down her spine—everything she’s fought to protect begins to unravel. Viscount Nathaniel, secluded in his Scarborough mansion, is a man marked by a tormented past. His life of isolation shatters the moment he meets the enigmatic Miss Windsor, awakening feelings he thought were long buried. But Nathaniel’s secrets run deep, and exposing them could destroy the fragile bond forming between them. In the fog-draped streets of London, a silent war brews between ancient forces, and Tabitha finds herself caught in the crossfire. As darkness closes in, she and Nathaniel must confront their haunted pasts and the powerful connection between them. Can their love withstand the shadows, or will the darkness consume them both? Perfect for fans of paranormal romance and mystery, Victorian Secrets is a tale of love, secrets, and supernatural intrigue that will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you're a fan of Sarah MacLean, Susanna Kearsley, or Kerrigan Byrne, you will enjoy Victorian Secrets.

An unconventional figure in an age that excluded women from government, Victoria was accorded prominence unavailable to any male monarch. Yet as Adrienne Munich argues in this fascinating work, the originality of the solid, dour icon that was Victoria lay, paradoxically, in her very ordinariness. The first book to fully investigate the influence of this icon of British history, Queen Victoria's Secrets demonstrates the firm grasp the queen held on the cultural imagination of her country, exploring how Victoria created and maintained her royal authority. Gracefully weaving together feminist, anthropological, and postcolonial approaches, Munich searches out the myriad, often contradictory incarnations of the queen in the minds of her people. How did Victoria convincingly maintain her power for forty years after Prince Albert's death, never giving up her identity as a grieving widow? How did Victorian society's reverential treatment of their queen conflate with the monarch's plain, middle class public image? These are some of the secrets Munich examines in her richly detailed work. In demonstrating the subtle but powerful ways in which Victoria performed significant cultural work, Queen Victoria's Secrets goes against the grain of Victoria scholarship, which has tended to overlook the queen's political and cultural centrality. This stylish, accessible portrait will be of great interest to those who are fascinated by the myth-making and secrets of the Victorian age.

This story is set in England during World War I and revolves around Miss Vivian, a 29-year-old woman. In this novel, Miss Vivian is the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt. She lives with her parents at their rural estate 'Plessings'. It is to be admired that Vivian, who has never done a day's work in her life, has a tenacious spirit that propels her in organizing, supervising and directing the Midlands Supply Depot with great efficiency. Meanwhile across the street the 'war girls' live in a very overcrowded hostel, here they share rooms with hardly any hot water and pretty much unpalatable food.

Dorothea's Daughter is a stunning new collection of short stories based on novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront , Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. They are postscripts, rather than sequels, entering into dialogues with the original narratives by developing suggestions in the text. The authors' conclusions are respected, with no changes made to the plot; instead, Barbara Hardy draws out loose threads in the original fabric to weave new material, imagining moments in the characters' future lives.

Originally published in 1901, 'East of Suez' was Alice Perrin's first collection of short stories. Her fascinating and thought-provoking tales of Anglo-Indian life rival the best work of Kipling, and were hugely successful in their day. Perrin tells stories of illicit love against a beautifully-drawn backdrop of the mystical east, interweaving the supernatural with exquisite details of her characters' lives. This scholarly edition includes: a critical introduction; author biography; suggestions for further reading; explanatory notes; contextual material on representations of the British Raj; illustrations from 'The Illustrated London News' and 'The Windsor Magazine'.