France 2007

Book excerpt: "It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection from Miss Temple's fiance, written on crisp Ministry paper and delivered on her maid's silver tray. But for Miss Temple, Roger Bascombe's cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for answers, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors - and into a remote estate where danger abounds and all inhibitions are stripped bare ... Thus begins Gordon Dahlquist's debut novel of Victorian suspense - at once a dazzling feast for the senses and a beguiling, erotic literary adventure." "Nothing could have prepared Miss Temple for where her pursuit of Roger Bascombe would take her - or for the shocking things she would find behind the closed doors of forbidding Harschmort Manor: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic - both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. As the unlikely trio search for answers - hurtling from elegant brothels to gaslit alleyways to shocking moments of self-discovery - they are confronted by puzzles within puzzles. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their lives are in danger. For the conspiracy they face - an astonishing alchemy of science, perverted religion, and lust for power - is so terrifying as to be beyond belief."--BOOK JACKET.