02627cam a2200409 i 4500 1018167748 TxAuBib 20231025120000.0 230519s2023||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2023022290 9780525558965 hardcover 0525558969 hardcover (OCoLC)1354647592 TxAuBib rda Smith, Zadie,. The fraud / Zadie Smith. New York : Penguin Press, 2023. ©2023. 454 pages ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper--and cousin by marriage--of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also skeptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The "Tichborne Trial"--wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title--captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task."-- Provided by publisher. 20231025. Orton, Arthur, 1834-1898 Trials, litigation, etc Fiction. Ainsworth, William Harrison, 1805-1882 Fiction. Peerage claims Great Britain Fiction. Impostors and imposture Fiction. Housekeepers Fiction. Cousins Fiction. Trials Fiction. London (England) Fiction. Historical fiction. Legal fiction (Literature.) Novels. TXAAL