Little Thriller From Writer of ‘Little Women’ to Appear

Random House publishers announced Monday that it will publish next fall a previously unknown novel by American children’s book author Louisa May Alcott that is completely unlike her previously published novels.

Alcott, who died in 1888, wrote classic tales of family life, such as “Little Women” and “Little Men.” She also fought slave owners and beef-eaters and supported women’s rights. Come next fall, she may become known as a good old-fashioned thriller writer.

Called “A Long Fatal Love Chase,” the 273-page novel set in Europe is about a woman, Rosamond, being chased by a drug-using cad twice her age, Philip Tempest, who wants to marry and imprison her while she fights for her freedom in and out of castles, convents and insane asylums and across moors.

There are fistfights, murders and hints of sex, real and imagined.

Written in 1866, two years before “Little Women,” the novel was rejected by her publisher on the grounds that it was too sensational. Random House editor Ann Godoff said it is, in fact, “a very adult novel.”

“I imagine it is the most adult work she ever produced,” Godoff said.

As far as editing goes, there is little she would change, Godoff said, even if there was a way that she could commune with the author. But she says she is not a fan of the title, since it gives too much of the plot away.

The work was housed for years with Alcott’s other papers in Boston’s Houghton Library. Then Alcott’s descendants put it up for sale, and it was bought by Kent Bicknell, a rare book collector and founder of the Sant Bani school in Sanbornton, N.H.

Bicknell said he also acquired the copyright. He struck an agreement with Random House to publish the book, hoping for increased sales stirred by the new film version of “Little Women.”

“Alcott wrote a lot of Gothic short stories that have only been published since the 1950s. They will be republished next year under the title ‘Louisa May Alcott Unmasked.’ She was a fascinating woman--an abolitionist, a vegetarian, a fighter in the women’s suffrage movement and the temperance movement,” he said.