Paraic O'Donnell. (2021). The House on Vesper Sands. Tin House Books.

Paraic O'Donnell. 2021. The House On Vesper Sands. Tin House Books.

Paraic O'Donnell, The House On Vesper Sands. Tin House Books, 2021.

Paraic O'Donnell. The House On Vesper Sands. Tin House Books, 2021.

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1. • value: Victorian
2. • value: secrets
3. • value: Charles Dickens
4. • value: banter
5. • value: Historical
6. • value: ghosts
7. • value: detective
8. • value: Arthur Conan Doyle
9. • value: Gothic
10. • value: wit
11. • value: sherlock holmes
12. • value: mystery
13. • value: murder
14. • value: England
15. • value: chilling
16. • value: Magic
17. • value: irish
18. • value: award winning
19. • value: sleuth
20. • value: Atmospheric
21. • value: Cambridge
22. • value: Jane Austen
23. • value: International
24. • value: Literary
25. • value: circe
26. • value: wilkie collins
27. • value: humorous literary fiction
28. • value: historical british fiction
29. • value: cryptic
30. • value: diane setterfield
31. • value: prize winning
32. • value: Liz Nugent
33. • value: Sarah Perry
34. • value: The Essex Serpent
35. • value: jon mcgregor
36. • value: Madeline Miller
37. • value: Once Upon a River
38. • value: the song of achilles
39. • value: british irish literary fiction

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: O'Donnell, Paraic
   • bioText: Paraic O'Donnell is the author of The House on Vesper Sands. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland with his wife and two children, and can usually be found in the garden.
   • name: Paraic O'Donnell

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2021-01-12T00:00:00-05:00

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title

The House on Vesper Sands

fullDescription

An Oprah Daily and CrimeReads Best Historical Novel of 2021

Named a Library Reads Pick, Apple Books' Best Book, Amazon Fiction & Literature's "Best of the Month," and a Powell's Pick

The Millions' Top Ten Book of the Month

"Funny, eerie, tender, haunting and unsettling, smokily atmospheric, and fantastically enjoyable." —Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights

London, 1893: high up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?

On the case is Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. Gideon Bliss, a Cambridge dropout in love with one of the missing girls, stumbles into a role as Cutter's sidekick. And clever young journalist Octavia Hillingdon sees the case as a chance to tell a story that matters—despite her employer's preference that she stick to a women's society column. As Inspector Cutter peels back the mystery layer by layer, he leads them all, at last, to the secrets that lie hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.

By turns smart, surprising, and impossible to put down, The House on Vesper Sands offers a glimpse into the strange undertow of late nineteenth-century London and the secrets we all hold inside us.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The Wall Street Journal
   • content: Ensconced in the rich, Gothic embellishments of Mr. O'Donnell's prose . . . . The House on Vesper Sands performs a . . . kind of enchantment, transforming a chronicle of sordid crimes into an enjoyably eerie ghost story.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Oprah Daily
   • content: Practically comes with the mood lighting one would hope for when reading a Victorian-era mystery. Expect pages infused with fog and the clicks of mysterious footsteps...written with modern wit and a Dickensian sense of detail.
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Seattle Times
   • content: That rare mystery that's at once gripping, elegantly written and very funny.
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Star Tribune
   • content: A tour de force that dexterously blends the drama of Dickens, the sensationalism of Wilkie Collins, and the mystery of Conan Doyle, with added chills and humor poured into the mix for good measure. . . . O'Donnell keeps his reader gripped with his fast pace, ingenious plotting and narrative twists and turns. His re-created world of costermongers and eel vendors, gin shops and boardinghouses, gentlemen's clubs and séance salons is vividly authentic. Cutter's punchy dialogue elicits laughs while the soul-stealing and 'half shades' imbue the proceedings with a welcome supernatural streak. A fiendishly entertaining winter's tale.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Richard Lipez, The Washington Post
   • content: In this charming jape of a thriller, Inspector Henry Cutter is known around New Scotland Yard for having 'a weakness for certain exotic cases.' In the snowy winter of 1893, he's drawn into a doozy when young employed women around London start to vanish, or—worse, in a way—have their souls stolen by ruthless spiritualists. Preposterous, you say? Not in the hands of O'Donnell, a kind of Oscar Wilde gone tipsy, who drops some Irish whimsy into the harsh reality of Victorian England.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Clare McHugh, The Washington Post
   • content: Vivid atmospherics and frequently comedic dialogue animate this highly polished novel. . . . O'Donnell's rendering of the past is faithful not only to how people ate, spoke and dressed in 1893, but also to how they thought. Many Victorians, living in an era of scientific and technological progress, felt an opposite pull—captivated by the supernatural, by ghost stories, by spooky phenomenon. The House at Vesper Sands summons up that spirit, beckoning it from a long dead world and into our own.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights
   • content: The House on Vesper Sands manages to do a hundred marvelous things at once: funny, eerie, tender, haunting and unsettling, smokily atmospheric, and fantastically enjoyable.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Sarah Perry, author of Melmoth
   • content: The most vivid and compelling portrait of late Victorian London since The Crimson Petal and the White.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Benjamin Dreyer, author of Dreyer's English
   • content: Riveting. . . . Positively bursts with inventiveness.
10. • premium: False
    • source: Book Riot's "Read or Dead" Podcast
    • content: A dark atmospheric setting with just a hint of murder.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Sandra Newman, author of The Heavens
    • content: Diabolical and delicious, this is the most enjoyable mystery I've read in years.
12. • premium: False
    • source: Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye
    • content: Shivery, suspenseful and altogether delicious, The House on Vesper Sands reads like the classic that Conan Doyle never got around to writing and marks Paraic O'Donnell as a conjuror worth following.
13. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
    • content: Stellar. . . . Fans of Sarah Perry (not to mention Dickens and Wilkie Collins) will be captivated by this marvelous feat.
14. • premium: False
    • source: Foreword Reviews
    • content: Chilling. . . . an atmospheric mystery that casts a keen eye on power imbalances and gender inequality.
15. • premium: False
    • source: Shelf Awareness
    • content: The House on Vesper Sands is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but Paraic O'Donnell's sophomore effort is the next best thing. . . . O'Donnell brings his story's humor and darker themes into richly rewarding alignment.
16. • premium: False
    • source: The Irish Times
    • content: Dickens is whirling enviously in his grave. . . . Read by a fire on a cold winter evening.
17. • premium: False
    • source: Bookreporter
    • content: By turns smart, surprising and impossible to put down, The House on Vesper Sands offers a glimpse into the strange undertow of late-19th-century London and the secrets we all hold inside us.
18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from November 2, 2020
      In Irish writer O’Donnell’s stellar historical, his stateside debut, 1893 London is abuzz with stories about the Spiriters, a shadowy group allegedly led by the wealthy Lord Strythe that’s said to steal the souls of working-class women. One winter night, seamstress Esther Tull jumps to her death from a window in Strythe’s home trying to escape from her usual work stitching intricate white gowns to the measurements of women she never sees. After Inspector Cutter of New Scotland Yard unsuccessfully seeks Strythe for questioning about Tull’s death, Cutter connects the case to the plight of former millinery worker Angela Tatton, who speaks deliriously about dark air and brightness and is confined to a hospital. Rev. Herbert Neuilly, who lives in the same boarding house as Cutter, had ministered to Tatton and other poor, sickly, young women. Neuilly, like Strythe, has gone missing, and his nephew, Cambridge divinity student Gideon Bliss, arrives in London concerned for him. Cutter brings Bliss along when he travels to Vesper Sands, the home of Strythe’s only living relation, hoping Strythe is hiding there. There they face mortal danger before learning the truth about the Spiriters. Making smart use of classic gothic imagery, O’Donnell excels at concocting eerie scenes. Yet he’s also very funny, particularly in exchanges between the profane Cutter and the verbose but perceptive Bliss. Fans of Sarah Perry (not to mention Dickens and Wilkie Collins) will be captivated by this marvelous feat.

19. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 1, 2020
      An orphan-turned-heiress, a university student, a down-on-his-heels clergyman, an inspector from Scotland Yard, a number of missing girls, and a host of high-society figures collide in this supernatural, gothic mystery. London, 1893. Octavia Hillingdon might be an heiress, but that's only because she and her brother, Georgie, were adopted by a newspaper magnate and given opportunities that would have otherwise been out of reach. Now, Octavia is a bicycle-riding Victorian lady journalist trying to uncover big stories even as she's limited to reporting on society events and gossipy pieces about the Spiriters by a difficult editor. Elf--that is, the Most Honourable Marquess of Hartington--is her friend and party sidekick, winnowing out gossipy tidbits for her. Gideon Bliss is an exceedingly poor university student in Cambridge who drops everything to rush to London after receiving a cryptic letter from his clergyman uncle about impending danger, yet he secretly hopes to once again meet up with his beloved Angela. The volatile Inspector Cutter handles special cases dealing with the occult at Scotland Yard. The lives of all these characters and more collide over the course of a few days in February: Gideon stumbles upon Angela--wearing a thin white shift and barely lucid--before the altar in an empty church, but he is drugged, she is taken, and he seeks Inspector Cutter's help. A seamstress jumps to her death from a window of Lord Strythe's London home, the gentleman himself disappears, and Olivia tries to find out why. Author O'Donnell carefully unspools the gothic creepiness of his story, teasing the reader with tidbits of information that raise more questions than they answer: Just who are the Spiriters? What are they doing with the young girls who go missing? How is the seamstress's suicide related to the death of the Inspector's wife? In the end, all the pieces fit together. An intriguing, unexpected gothic mashup with elements of Dorothy Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Josephine Tey.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

popularity

1560

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An Oprah Daily and CrimeReads Best Historical Novel of 2021

Named a Library Reads Pick, Apple Books' Best Book, Amazon Fiction & Literature's "Best of the Month," and a Powell's Pick

The Millions' Top Ten Book of the Month

"Funny, eerie, tender, haunting and unsettling, smokily atmospheric, and fantastically enjoyable." —Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights

London, 1893: high up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?

On the case is Inspector...

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3. • code: FIC022060
   • description: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Historical