Secret corridors, hidden rooms, and trapdoors are the stuff of adventure and romance. Egyptian pyramids riddled with underground chambers and booby traps. An English country house with a priest hole and a trick bookcase. A speakeasy with a sliding panel that leads to a brothel and a gambling parlor. Who wouldn’t want to go exploring?!
And where would Gothic storytelling be without the secret passage in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto? Or the hidden door to the attic in Jane Eyre that’s protecting an epic secret?
If your childhood was shaped by reading the enchanting adventures in The Secret Garden and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, or by solving the mystery of The Hidden Staircase with Nancy Drew, this show is for you.
In this episode, we discuss an amazing book heist from an ancient French monastery, debate if Ben Franklin was a werewolf hunter, get lost in the Mansion on O Street, and daydream about living in the New York Public Library. Then we recommend great books that lured us into magical portals, dangerous tunnels, secret passages, and other hidden spaces that prove irresistible.
Here are the books set in Secret Passages we recommend on the show:
For a complete roundup of all the books we recommend, plus a full transcript and the other cool stuff we talked about, visit the Episode 43 show notes.
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