Crimes and Passion

Posted on July 1, 2018 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Blog, For Volunteers, Monthly Picks, News | Comments: Comments Off on Crimes and Passion

It’s July – time for the summer holidays! When on the beach, most people seem to read romances or crime fiction, so why not join them with 10 gems from our catalog?

If you can’t decide what to start with, try this 2-in-1: August Strindberg lets fellow playwright and recently engaged Maurice fall in love with Henriette, the mistress of a friend. As if that wasn’t bad enough, both are subsequently accused of murder… Find out what will become of them in the play There are Crimes and Crimes.

Often we know very well what becomes of crime victims, but many other people can be affected too: family and friends of both victim and criminal, police and judges… Walter Wood conducted interviews with such people and published them in Survivor’s Tales of Famous Crimes.

Famous is also Dorothy Osborne, amongst others for her extended, clandestine courtship with Sir William Temple. Unfortunately, only half of this 17th century correspondence has survived, but those are all the Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne.

At least that affair had a happy ending. It doesn’t look quite so good for seamstress Lene and Baron Botho, who fall in love over summer. Once the heat subsides, will they overcome their class difference? The novel Irrungen, Wirrungen by Theodor Fontane caused quite a stir when first published.

Time Crime always causes a stir – it is strictly forbidden to cross time lines and probability boundaries in the story by H. Beam Piper. Paratime Police agent Kiro Soran is ready to track down the gangsters – but in what time exactly should he start looking for them?

Finding the criminals was not a problem that Camden Pelham had when compiling The Chronicles of Crime, Vol. 1. He meticulously and chronologically lists famous crimes from the years 1700 to 1816. Read about 275 cases and their perpetrators, from the cold-hearted murderer to the slow-witted petty criminal.

If this is not enough crime for you, try La Fabrique de crimes. Author Paul Auguste Feval prides himself on having written a novel where in each chapter there are on average 73 murders! And that’s on top of theft, burglaries, swindles, forged documents…

Hopefully much tamer are the 14 stories penned by E. F. Benson and compiled in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories. The stories are grouped under headings like “Blackmailing Stories”, “Spook Stories” and, interestingly, “Cat Stories”.

If some of the titles of the collection Poems of Passion are brought in a certain order – Solitude, Attraction, Progress, Resolve, Impatience, Love’s coming – Ella Wheeler Wilcox could trace several relationships from beginning to end, including both the good and the bad parts.

Nothing is perfect, there is always a Flaw in the Crystal. When Agatha falls in love with married man Rodney, she can summon him at will with her paranormal abilities. However, once she tries to use them to do good, things turn out more complicated. Read the novel by May Sinclair to see if there is a happy ending after all.

Enjoy – and have happy holidays!

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