Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
Beyond the City (Illustrated) 

Destiny brings three peculiar households together in the placid English countryside. The desire for money and romance drives these Victorians beyond the natural boundaries of the middle class lives. As the web of lust and deceit draws these accidental neighbors ever closer. A financial scandal befalls one of them. An outside ‘rank pirate’ is linked somehow to one of the neighbors. Who could it be?