The Lost Stradivarius

• Illustrated Edition: includes 20 evocative, full-page illustrations that bring the story's haunting mood to life
• Bonus Reader Aids: a crisp plot summary, a handy characters list, and an author biography of J. Meade Falkner

A locked room at Oxford. A forgotten manuscript. A violin whose voice is too beautiful to be harmless.

J. Meade Falkner's The Lost Stradivarius (1895) is a refined Gothic tale of art and obsession. When promising scholar and musician John Maltravers uncovers an exquisite old violin and the papers of a long-dead aesthete, the discovery tunes his life to a darker key. Friendships cool, a good love falters, and the respectable surfaces of Victorian life ripple with secret decadence. Is the violin merely an instrument-or a conduit for the past's most perilous charms?

This reader-friendly edition pairs Falkner's elegant prose with 20 atmospheric illustrations, amplifying the novel's candlelit colleges, sun-struck Naples, and whispers of the supernatural. The included summary keeps you oriented without spoilers, the characters list makes names and relationships effortless to track, and the author bio sets the story in the curious, double life of Falkner himself-industrial magnate by day, antiquarian storyteller by night.

Perfect for: lovers of classic ghost stories, fans of Dorian Gray-style moral intrigue, book clubs, and anyone who believes beauty can both elevate-and endanger-the soul.

Open these pages and listen closely: the music is sublime... and it might be calling you.