The Opium-Eater

From bestselling thriller author David Morrell comes a brooding Thomas De Quincey short story about the coldest of deaths and their heartbreaking aftermath.
Thomas De Quincey the central character of Morrell's acclaimed Victorian mysteries, Murder as a Fine Art and Inspector of the Dead--was one of the most notorious and brilliant literary personalities of the 1800s. His infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater made history as the first book about drug dependency. He invented the word "subconscious" and anticipated Freud's psychoanalytic theories by more than a half century. His blood-soaked essays and stories influenced Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.
But at the core of his literary success lies a terrible tragedy. In this special-edition novella, based on real-life events, Morrell shares De Quincey's story of a horrific snowstorm in which a mother and father died and their six children were trapped in the mountains of England's Lake District. Even more gripping is what happened after. This is the true tale of how Thomas De Quincey became the Opium-Eater, brought to life by award-winning storyteller David Morrell.
An afterword contains numerous photographs of the dramatic locations in the story.
"Thomas De Quincey the main character of David Morrell’s acclaimed Victorian mystery/thrillers, Murder as a Fine Art and Inspector of the Dead was one of the most sensational and inventive English authors of the 1800s. He anticipated Freud’s psychoanalytic theories by more than half a century. In his 1854 blood-soaked postscript to “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” he described England’s first media-sensation mass murders, the Ratcliffe Highway killings, with such vivid detail that he invented the true-crime genre. He influenced Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. In this special- edition novelette, based on actual events, De Quincey tells the heartbreaking tale of how he became known as the Opium-Eater. An afterword contains numerous photographs of the dramatic locations in the story."