The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) is a gothic psychological novel written by Beryl Bainbridge. In 1973, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like many of Bainbridge's earlier works, the novel is semi-autobiographical. In particular, the story was inspired by a relationship that she had with a soldier as a teenager. The characters of Nellie and Margo were based upon two of her paternal aunts. Set in Liverpool and Lancashire during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an
The Wrong Box (novel) The Wrong Box (novel) The Wrong Box is a black comedy novel co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, first published in 1889. The story is about two brothers who are the last two surviving members of a tontine. The book was the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with Osbourne, who was his stepson. The others were "The Wrecker" (1892) and "The Ebb-Tide" (1894). Osbourne wrote the first draft of the novel late in 1887 (then called "The Finsbury Tontine"), Stevenson revised it in 1888 (then called "A Game of Bluff") and again in 1889 when it