Death and the Sisters
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Before there was Frankenstein, a young Mary Shelley, her stepsister Jane “Claire” Clairmont, and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley are drawn into a shocking murder investigation in this deliciously captivating new historical mystery revolving around the real-life trio who would later scandalize 19th century England even as they transformed the literary world.
London, 1814: Mary Godwin and her stepsister Jane Clairmont, both sixteen, possess quick minds bolstered by an unconventional upbringing. Mary, whose mother famously advocated for women’s rights, rejects the two paths that seem open to her—that of an assistant in her father’s bookshop, or an ordinary wife. Though quieter and more reserved than the boisterous Jane, Mary’s imagination is keen, and she longs for real-world adventures.
One evening, an opportunity arrives in the form of a dinner guest, Percy Bysshe Shelley. At twenty-one, Shelley is already a renowned poet and radical. Mary finds their visitor handsome and compelling, but it is later that evening, after the party has broken up, that events take a truly intriguing turn. When Mary comes downstairs in search of a book, she finds instead a man face down on the floor—with a knife in his back.
Mary, Jane, and Shelley are all drawn to learn the truth behind the tragedy, especially as each discovery seems to hint at a tangled web that includes many in Shelley’s closest circle. But as the attraction between Mary and the married poet intensifies, it sparks a rivalry between the sisters, even as it kindles the creative fire within . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A teenage Mary Shelley anchors this wobbly first entry in the latest historical cozy series from Redmond (A Twist of Death). The year is 1814, and 16-year-old Mary Godwin is living in London with her father, his second wife, and her four siblings and stepsiblings. When she isn't working in the family bookshop or keeping house for her imperious stepmother, Mary and her sisters spend their time swooning over suave poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a regular visitor to their home. After dinner with Percy one night, Mary discovers a dead man on the floor of the bookshop with a knife protruding from his back, and the family summons two police officers to perform a cursory investigation. The victim is identified as Cecil Campbell, an anarchist poet and former classmate of Percy's. But how did he enter the locked shop, and why was he there? Might Percy be a suspect? Chapters alternate between Mary's point of view and her stepsister Jane's, but the two feel largely interchangeable, and the rest of Redmond's cast is dismayingly one-note. Stilted dialogue ("I am unused to these London manners. I have been in rough Scotland for too long") and a lack of suspense make matters worse. This misses the mark.