The Mystery Of Central Park
About this ebook
Pioneering undercover journalist Nellie Bly is rightly famous for exposing society's ills. From brutal insane asylums to corrupt politicians, she used the pages of the New York World to bring down all manner of frauds, cheats, and charlatans.
What no one knows is that Nellie Bly was also a novelist. Because, of the twelve novels Bly wrote between 1889 and 1895, eleven have been lost - until now!
Newly discovered by author David Blixt (What Girls Are Good For, The Master Of Verona), Nellie Bly's lost works of fiction are available for the first time! These are The Lost Novels of Nellie Bly!
Nellie Bly's first novel, in a newly revised edition! A rejected marriage proposal and the corpse of a dead beauty confound Dick Treadwell’s hopes for happiness, until his beloved Penelope sets him a task: she will marry him if he solves—The Mystery of Central Park!
Dick and his sweetheart Penelope discover the body of a beautiful young woman posed upon a Central Park bench. Instantly Dick is suspected of having something to do with the young woman’s death. Moreover, Penelope has long been urging the ne’er-do-well Dick to accomplish something with his life. So he sets out to discover the dead woman’s identity and solve the riddle of her death. Was it innocent? Suicide? Or was it murder?
From the twinkling lights of New York’s high society to dens of iniquity, Dick follows every trail until he uncovers a tenuous lead. Saving another young woman from the jaws of death, he puts his happiness in jeopardy to confront the scoundrel responsible for the dead woman’s fate.
Inspired by Bly’s own reporting during her time at the New York World, as she tracked down real-life scoundrels in both business and society, this edition combines both published versions of—The Mystery Of Central Park!
This new edition combines both versions of Bly's first novel into one new text! Bonus: includes Bly's articles that inspired the story, including The Infamy Of The Park!
About the author
Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth “Pink” Cochran. Her father, a man of considerable wealth, served for many years as judge of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. He lived on a large estate called Cochran’s Mills, which took its name from him.
Being in reduced circumstances after her father’s death, her mother remarried, only to divorce Jack Ford a few years later. The family then moved to Pittsburg, where a twenty-year-old Pink read a column in the Pittsburg Dispatch entitled “What Girls Are Good For.” Enraged at the sexist and classist tone, she wrote a furious letter to the editor. Impressed, the editor engaged her to do special work for the newspaper as a reporter, writing under the name “Nellie Bly.” Her first series of stories, “Our Workshop Girls,” brought life and sympathy to working women in Pittsburgh.
A year later she went as a correspondent to Mexico, where she remained six months, sending back weekly articles. After her return she longed for broader fields, and so moved to New York. The story of her attempt to make a place for herself, or to find an opening, was a long one of disappointment, until at last she gained the attention of the New York World.
Her first achievement for them was the exposure of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum, in which she spent ten days, and two days in the Bellevue Insane Asylum. The story created a great sensation, making “Nellie Bly” a household name.
After three years of doing work as a “stunt girl” at the World, Bly conceived the idea of making a trip around the world in less time than had been done by Phileas Fogg, the fictitious hero of Jules Verne’s famous novel. In fact, she made it in 72 days. On her return in January 1890 she was greeted by ovations all the way from San Francisco to New York.
She then paused her reporting career to write novels, but returned to the World three years later. In 1895 she married millionaire industrialist Robert Seaman, and a couple years later retired from journalism to take an interest in his factories.
She returned to journalism almost twenty years later, reporting on World War I from behind the Austrian lines. Upon returning to New York, she spent the last years of her life doing both reporting and charity work, finding homes for orphans. She died of pneumonia in 1922.
David Blixt is an author and actor living in Chicago. An Artistic Associate of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where he serves as the resident Fight Director, he is also co-founder of A Crew Of Patches Theatre Company, a Shakespearean repertory based in Chicago. He has acted and done fight work for the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC, and First Folio Shakespeare, among many others.
As a writer, his Star-Cross’d series of novels place the characters of Shakespeare’s Italian plays in their historical setting, drawing in figures such as Dante, Giotto, and Petrarch to create an epic of warfare, intrigue, and romance. In Her Majesty’s Will, Shakespeare himself becomes a character as Blixt explores Shakespeare’s “Lost Years,” teaming the young Will with the dark and devious Kit Marlowe to hilarious effect. In the Colossus series, Blixt brings first century Rome and Judea to life as he relates the fall of Jerusalem, the building of the Colosseum, and the coming of Christianity to Rome. And in his bestselling Nellie Bly series, he explores the amazing life and adventures of America’s premier undercover reporter.
David continues to write, act, and travel. He has ridden camels around the pyramids at Giza, been thrown out of the Vatican Museum and been blessed by John-Paul II, scaled the Roman ramp at Masada, crashed a hot-air balloon, leapt from cliffs on small Greek islands, dined with Counts and criminals, climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, and sat in the Prince’s chair in Verona’s palace. But David is happiest at his desk, weaving tales of brilliant people in dire and dramatic straits. Living with his wife and two children, David describes himself as “actor, author, father, husband - in reverse order.”
