Louisa May Alcott Unmasked: Collected Thrillers

by Louisa May Alcott, Madeleine B. Stern (Editor)

One of America's most adored juvenile fiction writers, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) also penned anonymous and pseudonymous sensation stories for popular magazines. Her spellbinding tales of intrigue and suspense, violence and evil, jealousy and revenge, were uncovered by the detective work of Madeleine Stern and others, who scrutinized published and unpublished sources for clues to Alcott's secret literary life.
Now Alcott's known thrillers are available for the first time in a single volume. Originally published between 1863 and 1870, these twenty-nine tales illuminate Alcott's versatility as a writer and her storytelling talents. The sensation stories, which feature a succession of powerful and passionate heroines, also reveal Alcott's feminist convictions.
Alcott wrote for various magazines geared toward different groups of readers, and her works were tailored to conform to the standards and perceived interests of each audience. Serials carried by Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, with its mass readership, were sensational shockers that contained violent themes of narcotics addiction and brutal murder, while the stories for Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine required genteel overtones and less violent plots. The toned-down sensationalism, however, did not preclude feminist heroines, or the titillation of sexual exchanges and the excitement of sexual power struggles.
All the tales in Louisa May Alcott Unmasked are engaging potboilers with vivid characters, exotic backdrops, and complex plots that will beguile today's readers.

Genres: Classics, Short Stories, Gothic, Fiction, Thriller, Suspense

780 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 1995

About the author

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A.M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was also handed to me by my cousin and I ended up reading it and loving it. Like A Whisper in the Dark, I loved this book because it was different than all the rest of the too good to be true books by Louisa May. This collection showed an entire different side of her that I thought was absolutely entertaining.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what I expected, but pleasantly surprised. Some excellent thrillers and some ok stories. Nice change of pace and very different from Little Women

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly creepy - you can almost imagine these being the stories Jo from Little Women wrote in NY.

[Kathy]

Really a fun book and a whole new side of Louisa!!!!

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the Alcott you know from "Little Women," which personally, I found boring and difficult to finish. Alcott's thrillers are, well, thrilling -- they're still suspenseful and gripping a century and a half after they were written. The stories, with all their romances and intrigues, are compelling; even with the number of tales included in this anthology, it's difficult to predict what plot twists Alcott will throw in next, and whether her characters will be granted a happy ending or not. The last ones dragged for me, as I found the longer works more richly developed, but all in all, well-worth the time to savor each story as one reads their way through this massive volume.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Alcott’s lesser known works that were written under pseudonyms. I enjoyed the short story format. It’s perfect for busy people. Her writing is amazing. She was a literary genius. I recommend it to all of her fans. The stories were mostly written to help her earn an income, and the money was so necessary that she learned to write with both hands so that she could keep writing when her favored hand hurt too much. I did notice a printing error in the middle, between Ariel, a Legend of the Lighthouse and A Nurse’s story. The stories are reversed in the book with the first page of each starting out the wrong one.

[Sanchita Sarkar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good book which shows the presence of good teachers and guide can make a huge difference in a person's life.

[Laura]

I'm writing mini-reviews of these stories as I read them.

1. "Perilous Play" - This story was hilarious! A group of bored aristocrats decide to have a little more "fun" after one friend produces a box of (seemingly) bonbons--only these candies are hashish. After heeding the recommendation of at least 12 "bonbons" to achieve a "magical feeling," one man and one woman, stoned out of their minds, go boat riding and confess love to each other while lost at sea. Essentially, the story offers two alternate views of drug use: either it is the source of true love and happiness, as evidenced by the lovers' union thanks to hashish and the last sentence of the story proclaiming "Heaven bless hashish!"; or, as the title suggests, finding a partner and succumbing to heteronormativity is the main consequence of drug use, one far more "perilous" than, say addiction. Either way, I found this story entertaining and hilarious knowing the cutesy stories for which Alcott is now celebrated.

[Charlene Morris]

•Pauline's passion and punishment
• A whisper in the dark
• A pair of eyes; or, Modern magic
• V.V.; or, Plots and counterplots
• The fate of the forrests
• A marble woman: or, The mysterious model
• A double tragedy. An actor's story
• Ariel. A legend of the lighthouse
• A nurse's story
• Behind a mask: or, A woman's power
• The freak of a genius
• The mysterious key. and what it opened
• The skeleton in the closet
• The Abbot's ghost: or, Maurice Treherne's temptation
• Taming a tartar
• Doctor Dorn's revenge
• La Jeune; or, Actress and woman
• Countess Varazoff
• The romance of a bouquet
• A laugh and a look
• Fatal follies
• Fate in a fan
• Perilous play
• Which wins?
• Honor's fortune
• Mrs. Vane's charade
• My mysterious mademoiselle
• Betrayed by a bukle
• La Belle Bayadére.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read these for a Gothic literature and film course in college and was amazed by the difference between Alcott's "normal" stories and these. This collection is a very insightful look at the darker side of 19th century life.

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read through about half of these, and I don't think I'm going to read anymore. I'm just not a thriller type of person, and too often I get through the story and am disappointed by the twist or the ending.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked "Little Women" much more than I did this collection.

[Caitlin Brengan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This must be the book I read in between classes at college! It's completely ridiculous and I loved it.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

didn't finish-very intricate plots, good romances but often similar