A gripping, short biography of the extraordinary Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, two early masterpieces of mystery and detection Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely near-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colorful...

A gripping short biography of the extraordinary Alfred Hitchock, the master of suspense. Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan...

If your tastes run to Victorian mysteries and murder, you’ll enjoy Peter Ackroyd’s special blending of fact and fiction in this magnificent recreation of the bizarre murders that rocked Victorian England. Drawing on surviving police records and court transcripts, Ackroyd paints a fascinating...

This book, as much a work of history as a biography, is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures in history. Thomas More (1478–1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political treatise, Utopia, that gave a political worldview; and...

A tour de force in the tradition of Hawksmoor and Chatterton, Peter Ackroyd’s new novel of deceit and betrayal is a witty reimagining of a great nineteenth-century Shakespeare forgery. Charles and Mary Lamb, who will achieve lasting fame as the authors of Tales from Shakespeare for children...

Dominion, the fifth volume in Peter Ackroyd’s masterful History of England, begins in 1815 as national glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to a post-war depression and ends with the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901. Spanning the end of the Regency, Ackroyd takes listeners...

From Henry VIII's cataclysmic break with Rome to the epic rule of Elizabeth I, the age of the Tudors comes to vivid life on the page. Peter Ackroyd, one of Britain's most acclaimed writers, brings the age of the Tudors to vivid life in this monumental book in his History of England series...

A brief yet definitive new biography of one of film's greatest legends, perfect for readers who want to know more about the iconic star but who don't want to commit to a lengthy work. He was the very first icon of the silver screen and is one of the most recognizable of Hollywood faces, even a...

In Revolution, Peter Ackroyd takes listeners from William of Orange’s accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was—again—at war with France, a war that would end with the...

In this massive bestseller in England, one of Britain's most popular and esteemed historians tells the epic story of the birth of the country. Peter Ackroyd, whose work has always been underpinned by a profound interest in and understanding of England's history, now tells the epic story of...

Peter Ackroyd has been praised as one of the greatest living chroniclers of Britain and its people. In Rebellion, he continues his dazzling account of the history of England, beginning the progress south of the Scottish king James VI, who on the death of Elizabeth I became the first Stuart king...

The sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd’s magnificent History of England series, from the Boer War to the Millenium Dome. Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd’s History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the...

When two nineteenth-century Oxford students—Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—form an unlikely friendship, the result is a tour de force that could only come from one of the world's most accomplished and prolific authors. This haunting and...

Two apparently harmless women reside in cottages one building apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore Cadmus – from...

In this second volume in the Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd brings us a man of humble beginnings, crude manners, and prodigious talents, the nineteenth-century painter J. M. W. Turner. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775. His father was a...