 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book by the oldest writer on your to-read stack.
Little Novels, by Wilkie Collins. I'm interpreting "oldest" as "born first," regardless of how long the author lived, so it's Wilkie Collins, 1824-1889. The "novels" are actually short stories, around 20 pages each, usually with a twist ending. There are some mysteries, lots of romance, and a couple of ghost stories - including more than one where the "ghost" turns up very much alive. As in most Collins stories, the right couple usually winds up together at the end. There are a couple of tragic exceptions, including a grimly accurate portrayal of domestic violence. One rather surprising theme in multiple stories is the jilted lover who becomes the friend and protector of his beloved and the man she rejected him for. The one clunker for me was "Mr. Captain and the Nymph," which has all the tired tropes of the "exotic" brown maiden who lives among the savages until she falls for a white man who wants to carry her away." My favorite was "Mr. Lepel and the Housekeeper," in which a dying man marries his best friend's beloved, so that she can marry the friend as a rich widow. But the "dying" man suddenly gets better after his wife accidentally drops the tray with his medicines on it. (The unlucky friend had warned him all along that his housekeeper was poisoning him.)
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