A Laodicean

Thomas Hardy subtitled this ‘A Story of To-day,’ and it is his most modern-minded novel, alive with telegraph wires, railways, and photography. Paula Power, the heiress of a self-made railway engineer, inherits an old castle and cannot make up her mind, a lukewarm ‘Laodicean’ torn between the young architect George Somerset and Captain De Stancy, heir to the aristocratic line that once held her home. Working against them is De Stancy’s scheming illegitimate son, who forges and manipulates to win the castle back for his blood. Hardy dictated much of the book from a sickbed, and it lacks the tragic power of his greatest work, yet its clash of new money and old lineage still rewards. Free to download in PDF and EPUB.