Sisterhood of the Underworld

London 1855. Adelaide Dickens’ life as a cat-fighter is about to change. Flushed from her latest victory she is introduced to a well-heeled gentleman, Mr Coningsby offering a lucrative boxing match at an unknown destination. Seizing the chance to add to her meagre savings, she accepts. But Coningsby has other ideas and she soon finds herself enmeshed in the dark and dirtier dealings of the mid-Victorian underworld.

Set against the squalid and fog laden backdrop of the river Thames and its waterside slums, Sisterhood of the Underworld is an epic and exhilarating saga of violence, intrigue, betrayal and unrequited love where no one is ever what they seem. Her love for the handsome and dedicated Dr Gore intent on alleviating the lot of the poor and destitute leads her into infatuation, rivalry and felony.

Always just one step ahead of the law, she lurches from one disaster to the next. Her hopeful ambition of settling into happy married life is suddenly dashed. Thwarted in love, she embarks upon yet another money-making enterprise only to find herself drawn yet again into a world where life is cheap but death sometimes has its reward. Her life is, by turns, comical, tragic, passionate and full of misplaced trust. Always in the background is the strange and colourful galaxy of characters destined to intrude upon her fractious and fragile existence where only the strongest survive in a society struggling to come to terms with itself.