The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins · 1868
This book is rated Ages 13+. It isn't available on your library card.
A priceless Indian diamond vanishes from an English country house on the night of Rachel Verinder's birthday. Told through the accounts of family, servants and investigators, the search uncovers secrets, mistaken suspicions and a patient plot years in the making.
A Victorian mystery involving theft, opium use and colonial attitudes of its time.
Characters
Franklin Blake
Rachel's lively, much-travelled cousin, who brings the cursed Yellow Diamond to the Verinder house for her eighteenth birthday.
Gabriel Betteredge
Lady Verinder's loyal old house-steward, who turns to Robinson Crusoe for guidance and tells the story with dry, warm humour.
Rachel Verinder
Lady Verinder's proud, strong-willed daughter, who is left the Moonstone and keeps her own secrets with fierce determination.
Sergeant Cuff
The famous London detective, lean and grizzled, who loves roses and reads hidden truths in a smear of paint.
Rosanna Spearman
The quiet second housemaid with a troubled past, who is drawn again and again to the eerie Shivering Sand.
Ezra Jennings
Mr. Candy's strange, sorrowful assistant, with piebald hair and a shadowed past, whom the whole neighbourhood distrusts.
Lady Verinder
Rachel's dignified, gentle mother and mistress of the Yorkshire house, who protects her daughter through the troubles that follow.
Godfrey Ablewhite
Rachel's tall, charming cousin from London, a celebrated charity speaker adored by ladies' committees and eager to win her hand.
Penelope Betteredge
Betteredge's sharp-eyed, warm-hearted daughter and Rachel's maid, who notices everything happening behind hedges and closed doors.
Mr. Bruff
The family's shrewd, plain-spoken old lawyer, who keeps their legal affairs in order and is nobody's fool.
The Chief Indian
The calm, courteous leader of three mysterious Indian jugglers who keep appearing wherever the Moonstone goes.
John Herncastle
Rachel's wild, disgraced uncle, a soldier who brought the Moonstone back from the storming of Seringapatam under a dark cloud.
About the story
In 1799, during the storming of Seringapatam in India, a British officer named John Herncastle steals a great yellow diamond, the Moonstone, from a Hindu shrine. Legend says the stone has been guarded for centuries and brings disaster to anyone who takes it. Fifty years later, Herncastle leaves the diamond in his will to his niece, Rachel Verinder, as an eighteenth-birthday gift. On the night of her birthday party at her mother's Yorkshire country house, Rachel wears it on her dress. By the next morning it is gone.
The search pulls in the whole household: the loyal old steward Gabriel Betteredge and his beloved Robinson Crusoe, the troubled housemaid Rosanna Spearman, Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, a blundering local superintendent, and the famous Sergeant Cuff, a London detective who would rather talk about roses. Three Indian men seem to be watching the house the whole time. The story is told by several narrators in turn, each with their own blind spots and their own reasons for what they say.
T. S. Eliot called The Moonstone the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels. It set many of the patterns later mysteries follow, and it is also a story about class, the costs of empire, love, and loyalty, told with warmth and a good deal of humour.
This is a condensed picture-book retelling in 120 illustrated pages, with about 47 minutes of synthetic-voice narration; the pictures are AI illustrations made for this edition. Wilkie Collins's full original novel is free to read in the public domain and well worth reading too.
Adapted from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868), public domain.
Questions
What is The Moonstone about?
A sacred Indian diamond, taken by a British officer during a battle, is left to a young Englishwoman and disappears from her room on the night of her eighteenth birthday. The novel follows the search for the thief, told by several witnesses in turn.
Who is the detective in The Moonstone?
Sergeant Cuff, a thin, gloomy-looking London detective with a passion for growing roses, is the best-known investigator in the book. Much of the story is told by Gabriel Betteredge, the Verinder family's elderly house-steward.
Is The Moonstone suitable for children or teens?
This edition is rated 13+. It includes a killing in a battle scene, a theft, suspicion falling on household members, and moments of sorrow and danger, though nothing is shown graphically.
How long does this edition take to read or listen to?
The narrated edition runs about 47 minutes across 120 illustrated pages.
Is this the full book?
No. It is a condensed, illustrated retelling. Collins's complete novel is much longer and is freely available in the public domain.
Read the text version: every page's caption, with its picture, on one page.
