The Devil's Cauldron

"By mere force of eye and nerve, I could compel the subject to display its thoughts to me as clearly as if I saw them in a mirror."Mr. O'Kell is in love with Miss Fairfax, a client of Mr. Grant, the esteemed lawyer who had drawn up her father's will. Grant's suspicions are roused when O'Kell asks to see Mr. Fairfax's will, and shortly after that Miss Fairfax becomes strangely ill. After a cheque for £10,000 payable at Coutts' Bank has been fraudulently cashed, the chase is on to bring O'Kell, a man with strange powers of persuasion, down. A rip-roaring tale with mesmerism, gambling, gentlemanly swindlers, abductions, attempted murder and suicide, The Devil's Cauldron is the debut novel of an author completely unknown to genre readers and reprinted for the first time since its initial publication in 1886.Discovered by Johnny Mains, Mislaid Books is proud to present a new edition of a lost mesmerism novel with a biographical essay that gives context to J.W. Nicholas' life.John William Nicholas (1862–1931) was a Welsh lawyer and coroner who wrote The Devil's Cauldron (1886), The Two Crosses (1887), At Midnight's Chime (1889), The House of Mystery (1891), The Story of Clovelly's Wife (1893), The Household of Hertz (1903) and The White Bird and Other Stories (1923).Mislaid Books is dedicated to reprinting 'lost' fiction. Read more