Product details
- ISBN 9780712369107
- Dimensions: 130 x 190mm
- Publication Date: 10 Mar 2026
- Publisher: British Library Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
"She said once she heard some people told to get an airing in a closed carriage and that her life had been like that, trying to get fresh air, but always closed up, in a box."
As warm sunshine bathes the streets of Paris in the late 1800s, the lively young debutante May meets the cotton-broker John Tyler. Far from a picturesque romance, life with the boorish broker turns sour as they move to Manchester and May finds herself trapped in a world of hostile servants and neglect. When Tyler meets his end from an overdose of arsenic the drug which he was so fond of prescribing himself as a kind of panacea May is dragged into a trial coloured by the public's hunger to paint her as a beguiling murderess.
Based on the real-life murder trial of Florence Maybrick in 1899, this novel spins the gripping tale of a case clouded by sensation, its unsolved mysteries, and the untold story of the human being at its heart. First published in 1943, it was filmed as The Mark of Cain in 1947.
Joseph Shearing was one of the pennames of the prolific English writer Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long (18851952), who is best known by the name Marjorie Bowen. As Shearing she wrote novels based on real-life cases, earning her a following among contemporary critics such as Edward Waheknecht, who said "she is more than 'a born story-teller'; she is a witch, a genius in the creation of atmosphere" with "all the prime gifts of a writer of 'thrillers.'"
