A young woman is forced to leave behind her priviliged rural lifestyle when her father moves the family to a northern working class town.

Miss Matty's house is full of life and bustle. Her dream of having a child in the house has been realized in the birth of Tilly, daughter of her maid Martha and carpenter Jem. Elsewhere, the shadow of the railway still looms, but the line has been halted five miles outside Cranford, a disaster as far as Captain Brown is concerned. Meanwhile, as Mr. Buxton returns to town with his son, William, and his niece, Erminia, Miss Matty becomes concerned about...

Cranford, in 1842, is a market town in northwest England. It is a place governed by etiquette, custom and above all, an intricate network of ladies. It seems that life has always been conducted according to their social rules. For spinsters Deborah Jenkyns, the arbiter of correctness, and Matty, her dumurring sister, the town is a hub of intrigue. Handsome new doctor Frank Harrison has arrived from London; a retired Captain and his daughters move...

Readers are well aware that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein: few know how many other tales of terror she created. In addition to Uncle Toms Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote some surprisingly effective horror stories. The year after Little Women appeared, Louisa May Alcott published one of the first mummy tales. These ladies werent alone. From the earliest days of Gothic and horror fiction, women were exploring the frontiers of fear, dreaming dark...