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Published Oct 2008
544 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In the autumn of 1876, nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at the great country house of Evenwood to become a lady's maid to the twenty-sixth Baroness Tansor. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l'Orme, to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal, and to set right a past injustice in which Esperanza's own life is bound up. At Evenwood she meets Lady Tansor's two dashing sons, Perseus and Randolph, and finds herself enmeshed in a complicated web of seduction, intrigue, deceit, betrayal, and murder. Few writers are as gifted at evoking the sensibility of the nineteenth century as Michael Cox, who has made the world of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins his own.
"[E]legant descriptive prose, those with the benefit of the full context and nuances of The Meaning of Night will better appreciate this sequel. " - Publishers Weekly.
"A sequel that will provide utterly different but equally rewarding experiences for readers who have and haven't read its equally leisurely predecessor." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. [T]his atmospheric and engrossing work can stand alone as a treat for anyone who enjoys Victorian thrillers. Strongly recommended." - Library Journal.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photograph: Jerry Bauer
Michael Cox was born in Northamptonshire in 1948. After graduating from Cambridge in 1971, he went into the music business as a songwriter and recording artist, releasing two albums and a number of singles for EMI under the name Matthew Ellis and a further album, as Obie Clayton, for the DJM label. In 1977, he took a job in publishing, with the Thorsons Publishing Group (now part of HarperCollins). In 1989, he joined Oxford University Press, where he became Senior Commissioning Editor, Reference Books.
His first book, a widely praised biography of the scholar and ghost-story writer M.R. James, was published by OUP in 1983. This was followed by a number of Oxford anthologies of short fiction, including The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (1986) and The Oxford Book of Victorian ...
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