Louisa May Alcott

Biography

Louisa May Alcott was born November 29, 1802, and died March 6, 1888. She was an author and poet and is best known for writing the Little Women series, which she penned between 1868 and 1886.

Alcott was born in modern-day Philadelphia to a close-knit, abolitionist family. She had three sisters—Anna Bronson, Elizabeth Sewall, and Abigail May—and her family eventually served as partial inspiration for many of Little Women‘s enduring characters. Alcott herself is often likened to the first novel’s protagonist, Jo March, a writer and tomboy; in fact, Alcott harbored a great deal of disdain for society’s insistence that she conform to certain feminine ideals of womanhood, and modern scholarship surrounding the author hypothesizes that, using a modern understanding of gender identity and presentation, Alcott may have actually been a trans man.

The Alcotts frequently struggled with finances, and prior to the publication of Little Women, Alcott wrote short stories in order to help support her family. Many of these stories focus on lurid themes, high-stakes drama, and other subjects considered taboo at the time. Nevertheless, Alcott’s thriller fiction was fairly successful, and modern readers are often surprised to find the degree to which this more dramatic fare differs in tone and subject from her more famous works.

Below is a collection of Alcott’s thriller novellas. Read at your own discretion—and please, enjoy.

Novellas by Louisa May Alcott

Thrice Tempted (1857)
Pauline’s Passion and Punishment (1862)
Behind a Mask; or, A Woman’s Power (1866)
The Mysterious Key and What It Opened (1867)
The Abbot’s Ghost, or Maurice Treherne’s Temptation (1867)
Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse (1869)