The Rag and Bone Shop

At the height of his career, Charles Dickens's every move, appearance, and public utterance was pored over in the pubs and the press. His private life held, however, one enormous secret: his thirteen-year affair with Ellen Ternan, a childlike actress from a family of traveling players. Told in the alternating voices of Dickens's sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth; his friend, mystery writer Wilkie Collins; and Ellen Ternan herself, The Rag and Bone Shop reveals the warring demands of public propriety and private libertinism. Devotees of Dickens, Collins, and great historical fiction will be ensnared by this suspenseful and bewitching tale.