An innovative study of how the Victorians used books, portraits, fairies, microscopes, and dollhouses to imagine miniature worlds beyond perception In 1856, Elizabeth Gaskell discovered a trove of handmade miniature books that were created by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë in their youth and that, as Gaskell later recalled, "contained an immense amount of manuscript, in an inconceivably small space." Far from being singular wonders, these two-inch volumes were part of a wide array of miniature marvels that filled the drawers and pockets of middle- and upper-class Victorians. Victorian miniatures pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge, mechanical production, and human perception. To touch a miniature was to imagine what lay beyond these boundaries. In Worlds Beyond, Laura Forsberg reads major works of fiction by George Eliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll alongside minor genres like the doll narrative, fairy science tract, and thumb Bible. Forsberg guides readers through microscopic science, art history, children's culture, and book production to show how Victorian miniatures offered scripts for expansive fantasies of worlds beyond perception.

During the local Dollhouse and Miniatures Fair, Geraldine Porter, the chairwoman of this illustrious event, gets into big trouble when she is faced with strange occurrences and murder, all of which lead to her friend Linda Reed. Original.

It's the fall of 1965 when 28-year-old Sister Francesca leaves her small town convent in upstate New York to study theology at a large university in the Bronx. She expects to face demanding professors and challenging classes; she doesn't expect to become entangled in the controversies surrounding Vatican II. What she least expects is involvement in the mysterious death of her new Superior, Mother Ignatius. Was the old woman a victim of greedy neighborhood businessmen? Or was she simply in the way of unstoppable changes in the Church? In the process of investigating her Superior's murder, Sister Francesca risks her life and must come to terms with the changing world around her, a challenge to both her faith and her vows.

Math Professor Sophie Knowles finds herself in the middle of an investigation after her friend, Henley College librarian, Charlotte Crocker, is found dead in the stacks. When Sophie learns that Charlotte wasn't the quiet, law-abiding citizen she seemed to be, she sets out to determine who her friend really was, and to find her killer. As she deals with a group of lottery players, winners and losers, the odds are Sophie will solve the puzzle.

Math Professor Sophie Knowles becomes involved in the restoration of the campus bell tower, which has been closed for decades, ever since a student died there in a tragic accident. Sophie is curious when history seems to repeat itself—one of her students, Jenn, who was chosen to play the carillon in the new bell tower is beaten and left in a coma. Are students associated with the bell tower cursed? Sophie is determined to get to the bottom of Jenn's tragedy, which may mean digging back in history and finding out what happened twenty-five years ago.

Math Professor Sophie Knowles is looking forward to some time off for the summer, but things do not go as planned. The graduates are complaining about the mayor who gave the commencement address, one student is upset about her grade and vents on social media, and just when she is about to escape all of the drama to take a stroll with her helicopter pilot boyfriend, they’re interrupted by the mayor himself as he falls into the campus fountain with a knife in his back. Sophie dives into all the scandal and corruption that seems to connect to the mayor and finds his killer.

I cannot O! I cannot be reconciled to living as I have done for 3 years past... Will you let me try to soften, if I cannot wholy) releave you, from your Burden of Cares and perplexities?'' So begins Abigail Adams' correspondence to her husband in these volumes: a plea to end their long separation, as John Adams represented the United States in Europe while Abigail tended to family and farm in Massachusetts, and passed on to John Crucial political information from Congress. In October 1782, the Adams family was as widely scattered as it would ever be, with young John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg, John at The Hague, and Abigail in Braintree with her daughter and younger sons. With the summer of 1784, however, Abigail would have her fondest wish, as most of the family reunited to spend nearly a year together in Europe. As the Adams family traveled, and as the children came of age, so their correspondence expanded to include an ever larger and more fascinating range of Cultural topics and international figures. The record of this remarkable expansion, these volumes document John Adams' diplomatic triumphs, his wife and daughter's participation in the cosmopolitan scenes of Paris and London, and his son John Quincy's travels in Europe and America. These pages also welcome Thomas Jefferson, who soon became one of Abigail's closest friends, into the family correspondence. From the intimacies 0f the children's education, sentimental and worldly, to the details of the 'arm friendship between Abigail and Madame Lafayette, to the grand drama of Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Younger debating in Parliament, the contents of these letters draw an incredibly rich picture of international life in the 17805 and an incomparable portrait of America's first family of politics and letters.