REVIEW: BITTEN BY WITCH FEVER

How interesting can a book about wallpaper be? Extremely.  Lucinda Hawksley has written a brief, approachable history of the use of wallpaper and arsenic in the Victorian era. While Regency decoration favored more muted color palettes, the Victorians embraced bright, gaudy and electric hues. This included the rich fabrics used to make women’s ball gowns…

REVIEW: DID SHE KILL HIM?

Stuck in the airport? Stuck with the in-laws? Feeling a bit murderous? Escape with this engrossing true (mainly unsolved) crime from Victorian England, with its roots in the American South. Florence Chandler, every inch the southern belle, took a steamer from New York to Liverpool in 1880. Her gold-digging mother planned to shop her on the…