LitLounge: The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (Online)

LitLounge is meeting on Zoom in partnership with Skokie Public Library. Register here; contact Nate Miller (nmiller@mgpl.org) for details.

The book can be checked out through all library ebook platforms, including Hoopla where copies are always available. Find instructions on our Download & Stream page, or contact us for assistance.

Book Synopsis:  

All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being held in the Old Bailey.

The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore.

But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship.

Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself.