The Dreaming Lady

A will has vanished. Not stolen from a safe. Not burned in a grate. Simply gone — from a house where it must still be, leaving a family facing ruin and a set of children whose entire future turns on a single sheet of paper that nobody can find. Everyone in that household has already searched. Everyone has already failed. So the problem is handed to a young woman who is not supposed to be thinking about anything more taxing than her dance card: Violet Strange, the society debutante who glitters through New York's ballrooms by night and is, in the strictest secrecy, a paid investigator. Nobody suspects her, because nobody could possibly imagine it. And she solves it the way she always does — by listening to the exact word somebody used, rather than the word everyone expected them to use. From Anna Katharine Green, the American novelist often called the mother of the detective novel, who was writing best-selling mysteries a decade before Conan Doyle put pen to Baker Street. FOR LISTENERS This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Dreaming Lady by Anna Katharine Green, collected in The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries. The whole case turns on one small thing: listening to the exact word somebody used, instead of the word you assumed they meant. When did you first suspect where the will had gone? SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS CREDITS Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by Anna Katharine Green (public domain). TAGS / KEYWORDS anna katharine green audiobook, violet strange audiobook, the dreaming lady audiobook, the golden slipper violet strange, female detective audiobook, missing will mystery, hidden document mystery, mother of the detective novel, new york society mystery, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery HASHTAGS