An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption. Illustrated sidebar notes provide historical background to the text.

A teenage prostitute ascends through the many layers of Victorian London society in this highly acclaimed “big, sexy, bravura a novel” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times).
 
London, 1870s. At the heart of this panoramic narrative is a young woman’s struggle to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Sugar, a nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for a...

"When Thomas Pitt is tasked with playing bodyguard to Sofia Delacruz, a young and controversial British preacher who has been living in Spain and has returned to England on a mysterious errand, he thinks it's a waste of Special Branch's time and resources. But when kidnappers manage to reach Sofia murdering two of her companions in the process. Pitt learns that the message the lovely evangelist was meant to deliver was far more urgent than he knew....

Forced to leave her husband and two children to attend her dying aunt on the far west coast of Ireland over the Christmas holidays of 1895, Emily Radley confronts her own depression as well as a tragic secret that is destroying the spirit of her aunt's remote village.

"It is not the custom for the commander of Special Branch to receive a royal summons-- so Thomas Pitt knows it must be for a matter of the gravest importance. The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen's confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. At Her Majesty's request, Sir John had been surreptitiously investigating Alan Kendrick, a horse-racing enthusiast who seems...

"When the Duke of Blackford enters her bookstore, Georgia knows the Archivist Society is in need of her services. The Tsar of Russia and his family are visiting Queen Victoria on the auspices of the engagement of the Russian princess Kira to the son of the Queen's cousin. When Kira's bodyguard is found dead on a train returning from Scotland, the Queen calls on Blackford to discreetly protect the princess and prevent an international incident. The...

Victorian England is a country of sharp divides between rich and poor, but James Lionel Falconer is everything a self-made man should be: handsome, ambitious, charming, and brimming with self-confidence. Even as a boy working in his father's market stall in Camden, he was determined to become a merchant prince. Through hard work and a single-minded determination, James rises quickly through the ranks, with a loving wife, devoted children, and a lofty...