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The Bride of the Tomb & Queenie's Terrible Secret
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
270 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1883
3 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
50 books3 followers"Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller" was the pen name for Mittie Frances Clark Point, taken from the name of her second husband. She wrote around 80 "dime novels" from 1881 to 1915 and was one of the best-known authors of her time.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 7, 2014
Last summer, my library discovered some old "dime novels" and we've been working on acquiring more since then to build an awesome collection. We are also digitizing the ones that we can and then feeding them into Project Gutenberg's proofreading project to create ebooks of them. This is all totally awesome and I am helping with some of the proofreading! :D
So this was the first of our newly ebook-ed dime novels that I read and it was a lot of fun! Both of the novels in this 2-in-1 edition were full of clichés & plot "twists" I could see coming a mile off (before soap operas, there were dime novels...), but they each also had a few surprises, which was nice.
The Bride of the Tomb is about lovely Lily Lawrence, who apparently commits suicide on the eve of her wedding to — get this — Lancelot Darling. (Best character names ever, y/y?) Anyway, it turns out that she's not actually dead, she's only mostly dead, nor did she attempt suicide — rather, someone attempted to murder her. So the doctor they called upon discovering her "dead" body turns out to be a nefarious villain who happens to be pals with a suitor whom Lily had scorned. (Sadly, the scorned lover is only named Harold Colville. Not everyone can have hilarious names, I guess.) This is all revealed within the first two chapters, so hopefully you don't feel like I've spoiled everything for you. Anyway, the doctor spirits away Lily's body to the lair of Harold Colville, where Colville means to keep her prisoner until she agrees to marry him, which Lily vows she never will. Meanwhile, since her family thinks she's dead, they're of course not looking for her, but they do eventually discover that her "dead" body has been stolen from the family crypt, so they hire a detective. But Lily isn't entirely a damsel-in-distress! In between bouts of fainting and/or swooning, she's actually trying to save herself! So that was kind of cool. Plus, there's a mystery at the house where she's being held prisoner and you get to read about what a dolt her beloved Lancelot is. It's quite a fun read!
Paired with this tale is another story of mostly dead people, Queenie's Terrible Secret. In this story, Queenie has a vision of her own doom when she is at a ball one night, but she gets over it pretty quickly. A few months later, she is supposed to travel to Europe with her mother and sisters, but she begs off at the last minute, saying she wants to stay at home with her father. But she doesn't go home to her father and instead staggers in the door a whole year later (coincidentally on the same night her mother and sisters return from Europe), looking rather the worse for wear. She refuses to tell anyone where she's been or what she's been up to, but eventually confesses her "terrible secret" to her father (but not the reader; the reader is kept in suspense over this "terrible secret" for quite a while longer). She recovers from her secret ordeal and tries to move on with her life, but the "terrible secret" keeps haunting her. I thought I wasn't going to like this story as much as Bride of the Tomb, but there was a surprise twist near the end that I actually *didn't* see coming and that moved Queenie up in my readerly affections.
So, as I said, I quite enjoyed these both. I mean, they're obviously not paragons of literature, but they're fun and they did mess with my expectations a bit. I also found it interesting that the women in both stories are much more active characters than the men, who are mostly stupid. For a book published in 1883, that's pretty cool.
So this was the first of our newly ebook-ed dime novels that I read and it was a lot of fun! Both of the novels in this 2-in-1 edition were full of clichés & plot "twists" I could see coming a mile off (before soap operas, there were dime novels...), but they each also had a few surprises, which was nice.
The Bride of the Tomb is about lovely Lily Lawrence, who apparently commits suicide on the eve of her wedding to — get this — Lancelot Darling. (Best character names ever, y/y?) Anyway, it turns out that she's not actually dead, she's only mostly dead, nor did she attempt suicide — rather, someone attempted to murder her. So the doctor they called upon discovering her "dead" body turns out to be a nefarious villain who happens to be pals with a suitor whom Lily had scorned. (Sadly, the scorned lover is only named Harold Colville. Not everyone can have hilarious names, I guess.) This is all revealed within the first two chapters, so hopefully you don't feel like I've spoiled everything for you. Anyway, the doctor spirits away Lily's body to the lair of Harold Colville, where Colville means to keep her prisoner until she agrees to marry him, which Lily vows she never will. Meanwhile, since her family thinks she's dead, they're of course not looking for her, but they do eventually discover that her "dead" body has been stolen from the family crypt, so they hire a detective. But Lily isn't entirely a damsel-in-distress! In between bouts of fainting and/or swooning, she's actually trying to save herself! So that was kind of cool. Plus, there's a mystery at the house where she's being held prisoner and you get to read about what a dolt her beloved Lancelot is. It's quite a fun read!
Paired with this tale is another story of mostly dead people, Queenie's Terrible Secret. In this story, Queenie has a vision of her own doom when she is at a ball one night, but she gets over it pretty quickly. A few months later, she is supposed to travel to Europe with her mother and sisters, but she begs off at the last minute, saying she wants to stay at home with her father. But she doesn't go home to her father and instead staggers in the door a whole year later (coincidentally on the same night her mother and sisters return from Europe), looking rather the worse for wear. She refuses to tell anyone where she's been or what she's been up to, but eventually confesses her "terrible secret" to her father (but not the reader; the reader is kept in suspense over this "terrible secret" for quite a while longer). She recovers from her secret ordeal and tries to move on with her life, but the "terrible secret" keeps haunting her. I thought I wasn't going to like this story as much as Bride of the Tomb, but there was a surprise twist near the end that I actually *didn't* see coming and that moved Queenie up in my readerly affections.
So, as I said, I quite enjoyed these both. I mean, they're obviously not paragons of literature, but they're fun and they did mess with my expectations a bit. I also found it interesting that the women in both stories are much more active characters than the men, who are mostly stupid. For a book published in 1883, that's pretty cool.
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March 13, 2016Super fun dime novel double feature! The Bride of the Tomb is one of the best sensational romances I've ever read. It's very, VERY generic...as in it really follows the genre pattern. There is absolutely no nuance to be found in the characters but instead of detracting from the narrative, it enhances the fairy tale nature of it. There's suicide by jeweled dagger, resurrection from the grave, people pressing poisoned flowers to their lips, a house deep in the woods with a torture chamber and LOTS of cliffhanger endings to chapters that really made me squirm in my seat. Queenie's Terrible Secret was pretty good too but had a similar abduction plot, so reading it right after Bride of the Tomb kind of took away some of the excitement I'm sure I would have experienced if I hadn't read the superior novel first. I still liked it a lot though! Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller is one of my favorite sensation writers; she really knows how to write delicious descriptions of luxuries plus how to keep you on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen to the heroine!
February 11, 2014
More melodrama. These books are hard to put down! 3.5 stars.
December 16, 2014
I really enjoyed these dime novels from 1883. Bride of the Tomb was a real page-turner. Queenie's Terrible Secret was also enjoyable but I don't recommend reading them one right after the other like I did -- they are too similar in storyline.
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July 25, 2016http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42100/...
Just The Bride of the Tomb.
Just The Bride of the Tomb.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews