The Brontës are perhaps the most acclaimed of all literary families. Collectively they are responsible for such classics as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, amongst others. What makes their achievements even more remarkable is that, of the Brontë sisters, only Charlotte lived past the age of 30. Not uncommonly for the era, they succumbed to the effects of tuberculosis and cholera. Or at least thats the official verdict. Criminologist James Tully instead favours a different version of events, generously peppered with lust, murder, and intrigue (he is a criminologist, after all). Tully identifies one Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, curate to the sisters father, as criminal mastermind incarnate. Upon wooing Charlotte in 1845, he somehow managed to persuade the eldest Brontë that their lives would be all the more better were they able to poison the rest of the famous family, thus inheriting the entire Brontë estate. Yet that wasnt enough for the murderous Nicholls, whose murderous schemes climaxed with the poisoning of his very own wife, making himself the sole beneficiary of their fortunes. As Leo Tolstoy famously wrote, All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.