from arubabookwoman

Desparate Remedies, Thomas Hardy's first published novel, is a story of blackmail, murder and romance. When Cytherea, a newly impoverished young woman, takes a position with Miss Aldclyffe as a ladies' maid, she is surprised to learn that Miss Aldclyffe also bears the unusual name of Cytherea. Is...

from LARA335

Hardy's first novel, typical of him for the descriptions of the countryside and weather and love entanglements, but unusual in that it developes into a mystery with an increasingly fiendish villain. But within the story Hardy sheds light on the social and economic horrors of the day. He sympathet...

from jeffome

A late 1800's English countryside romance of sorts that is chock-full of curious mysteries that kept me in the dark until clarified at the end. And this book has deceit, death, bigamy, murder, suicide, and of course, the big country manor house. Slightly convoluted with a full slate of remarkable...

from mwittman

Loved Thomas Hardy when I was in high school, mostly because one of my teachers kept going on (and on) about Julie Christie as Bathsheba in the movie version of "Far From the Madding Crowd." Yeesh. What a thing to remember. Anyhow, had never read this Hardy before, and could not put it down. And ...

from gypsysmom

I have joined a Thomas Hardy reading group and this is the first book we have read because it was the first one he published. In form it is somewhat like Woman in White by Wilkie Collins rather than Hardy's better known books which are character studies more than anything. The last third of the b...