Wilkie Collins 
The Haunted Hotel [EPUB ebook] 
Murder Mystery

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for ‘The Woman in White’ (1859) and ‘The Moonstone’ (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, ‘Antonina’, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, who became a close friend and mentor. Collins achieved financial stability and an international following with his best known works in the 1860s. His works were classified at the time as ‘sensation novels’, a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.