The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë: The Secrets of a Mysterious Family

Using fiction to explore further his investigation into the Brontës’ lives, noted true-crime author James Tully creates a murder mystery darker than anything produced by their imaginations and reveals a hidden side to their literary myth. In 1845, Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls came to Haworth Parsonage to be the new curate. His arrival ignited the passions beneath the four Brontë siblings’ isolated life on the Yorkshire moors. Within two years, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey were published. Two years after that, Branwell, Emily, and Anne were dead. By 1855, Charlotte was also dead, after barely a year of marriage to Nicholls. The causes of their demise have never been fully investigated but simply incorporated into the Brontë myth. Told through the parsonage maid, Martha Brown, The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë penetrates the claustrophobic world where the Brontë sisters wrote their stories of tumultuous passions and twisted love.