Beyond the City

# Beyond the City: A Novel

Arthur Conan Doyle's Beyond the City opens in a genteel suburban district outside London. The novel centers on two elderly spinster sisters, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, who observe the arrival of new neighbors at three recently constructed villas opposite their long-standing cottage. The Williams sisters have witnessed their peaceful rural domain transformed into a modern housing development called "The Wilderness."

The first two villas attract respectable tenants: Admiral Hay Denver, a distinguished military officer with his son Harold, and Dr. Balthazar Walker, a retired physician with two daughters. However, the arrival of the third tenant—the widow Mrs. Westmacott and her nephew Charles—proves shocking to the conservative sisters. The eccentric Mrs. Westmacott emerges wearing an unusual athletic outfit, directs her nephew imperiously, and violently assaults a cab driver over his fare, astonishing the neighborhood and introducing unorthodox modernity to the suburb.