Great Books

New York Times bestselling novelist Anne Perry, the undisputed Queen of Victorian mysteries and the author of an acclaimed series set during World War I, now broadens her canvas with her first major stand-alone book—an epic historical novel set in thirteenth-century Constantinople, where a woman must live a lie in her quest to uncover the truth.    Arriving in the ancient Byzantine city in the year 1273, Anna Zarides has only one mission: to prove the innocence of her twin brother, Justinian, who has been exiled to the desert for conspiring to kill Bessarion, a nobleman. Disguising herself as a eunuch named Anastasius, Anna moves freely about in society, using her skills as a physician to manoeuver close to the key players involved in her brother’s fate. With her medical practice thriving, Anna crosses paths with Zoe Chrysaphes, a devious noblewoman with her own hidden agenda, and Giuiliano Dandolo, a ship’s captain conflicted not only by his mixed Venetian-Byzantine heritage but by his growing feelings for Anastasius.Trying to clear her brother’s name, Anna learns more about Justinian’s life and reputation—including his peculiar ties to Bessarion’s beautiful widow and his possible role in a plot to overthrow the emperor. This leaves Anna with more questions than answer, and time is running out. For an even greater threat lies on the horizon: Another Crusade to capture the Holy Land is brewing, and leaders in Rome and Venice have set their sights on Constantinople for what is sure to be a brutal invasion. Anna’s discoveries draw her inextricably closer to the dangers of the emperor’s treacherous court—where it seems that no one is exactly who he or she appears to be.    Richly detailed and finely wrought, The Sheen on the Silk is a bold and brilliant work that affirms Anne Perry’s talent as a master storyteller.

Anne Perry on The Sheen on the Silk I wanted to try something different and challenging, and yet still within the categories of historical fiction, and mystery. I felt it must be set in a place and time which gripped my imagination, was filled with both physical and emotional conflict, yet preferably not one already exhaustively explored. My agent suggested Byzantium: beautiful, complex, sophisticated, and in the 13th century, embattled on all sides. The Latin crusaders had already burned the city, stolen its treasures and murdered or exiled its people in 1204. They returned from exile only in 1262. To the north and east was Russia and the hordes of the Great Khan, to the south the rising power of Islam. In the midst of this, the thousand-year-old Byzantine Empire is trying to rebuild its fire-scarred city and its ruined trade and economy. Before the sack by the crusaders, it was the end of the Silk Road from the east, of the spice trade, the crossroads of Europe and Asia, ancient, subtle and rich. When my novel opens, the Empire is on the brink of a final ruin from which it will never rise. If it does not renounce its Orthodox Christian faith and submit to the Pope in Rome, the crusade being planned will decimate it forever. Into this cauldron of emotions comes Anna Zarides, a young woman physician whose twin brother has been accused of murdering the nobleman who was leading the resistance against Rome, and the abandonment of the Orthodox faith. Anna cannot believe he is guilty, and disguises herself as a eunuch, so she can move freely in society, treating both men and women, in order to prove his innocence. She is a brilliant doctor, practicing Christian medicine openly, and Arabic and Jewish medicine discreetly. (My research for this was fascinating!) She must not be caught either with the far more effective alien medicine, or in the deceit of pretending to be a man when she is not--the punishment for either would be very serious. She must remain safe while keeping her medical integrity, and weave her way through political and religious intrigue to solve a murder and expose a terrible plot, all as a city faces its final invasion and disaster. Other characters include a Roman bishop, subtle and devious, desperate to find a passion in life; a Byzantine eunuch bishop who confuses faith in God with loss of power; a half Venetian, half Byzantine sailor/adventurer seeking his own identity torn between nations at war with each other (with whom Anna falls in love); and a woman who escaped the ruin of the city in 1204, as a tiny child, and lives to revenge the family she saw murdered and the city she loved and identified with. The rape of Byzantium was like a defilement of herself that she can never forgive. I hope I have caught the passion and the conflict of faith and survival, as well as some of the reality of the search we all make for what truth to believe in, and what costs we must pay to find our own spiritual honor. --Anne Perry

On the bustling docks along the River Thames, Great Britain’s merchant ships unload the treasures of the world. And here, in dank and sinister alleys, sex merchants ply their lucrative trade. The dreaded kingpin of this dark realm is Jericho Phillips, who seems far beyond the reach of the law. But when thirteen-year-old Fig is found with his throat cut, Commander William Monk of the River Police swears that Phillips will hang for this abomination. Monk’s wife, Hester, draws a highly unusual guerrilla force to her husband’s cause—a canny ratcatcher, a retired brothel keeper, a fearless street urchin, and a rebellious society lady. To one as criminally minded as Phillips, these folks are mere mosquitoes, to be sure. But as he will soon discover, some mosquitoes can have a deadly sting.

In her beloved Christmas novels, Anne Perry brings readers both the authentic Victorian charm and the nail-biting suspense that have made her Thomas Pitt and William Monk tales bestsellers for a generation. Though rife with intrigue, these special seasonal stories beam with the blessed light of the holiday. Ten days before Christmas, as an icy wind cuts through London, wealthy James Wentworth feels not joy but grief. His reckless son, Lucien, has been lured into a deadly world of drugs and wild passion. Wentworth’s only hope, he believes, is his old friend Henry Rathbone, who volunteers to search for the prodigal son. Rathbone knows nothing of the sensation-obsessed underworld where Lucien now dwells, but he acquires two unexpected new companions who do: Squeaky Robinson, a reformed brothel-keeper who now works in Hester Monk’s medical clinic, and Crow, a mysterious slum doctor who turns no one away, however undeserving. Slowly this odd trio gathers clues—about Lucien’s mad infatuation with a beautiful woman named Sadie, and about Shadwell, the ruthless man who owns her and, like the Devil, never lets go of one of his own. Rathbone, Squeaky, and Crow even welcome into their little band a most valuable recruit: young Bessie, a teenager whose courage holds fast even in the depths of the slum. And so they set forth on their odyssey into London’s dark streets, on a mission whose outcome they cannot begin to guess.Anne Perry’s novels are supreme masterpieces of suspense, and A Christmas Odyssey ranks with the very best. The days leading up to Christmas may prove to be fraught with challenges, but ’tis the season for comfort and joy and miracles.

The Prince of Wales has asked four wealthy entrepreneurs and their wives to Buckingham Palace to discuss a fantastic idea: the construction of a six-thousand-mile railroad that would stretch the full length of Africa. But, alas, the prince’s gathering proves disastrous when the mutilated body of a prostitute turns up in a linen closet among the queen’s monogrammed sheets. With great haste, Thomas Pitt, brilliant mainstay of Special Services, is summoned to resolve the crisis. The Pitts’ cockney maid, Gracie, is also recruited to pose as a palace servant and listen in on the guests’ conversations. If Pitt and Gracie fail to find out who brutally murdered the young woman, Pitt’s career will be over, and the scandal may just cause the monarchy to fall.

In her new masterpiece featuring private inquiry agent William Monk, New York Times bestselling novelist Anne Perry displays her prodigious writing talent. With insight, compassion, and a portraitist’s genius, Perry illuminates the shifting tide of emotions encompassing Queen Victoria’s London and the people who live there—aristocrats, brothel owners, thieves, Dickensian ruffians, and their evil keepers. She takes us through dangerous backstreets where the poor eke out their humble livings, and into the mansions of the rich, safe and secure in their privileged lives. Or so they believe. . . .William Monk knows London’s streets like the back of his hand; after all, they are where he earns his living. But the river Thames and its teeming docks— where towering schooners and clipper ships unload their fabulous cargoes and wharf rats and night plunderers ply their trades—is unknown territory.Only dire need persuades him to accept an assignment from shipping magnate Clement Louvain to investigate the theft of a cargo of African ivory from Louvain’s recently docked schooner, the Maude Idris. Monk is desperate for work, not only to feed himself and his wife, Hester, but to keep open the doors of Hester’s clinic, a last resort for sick and starving street women.But he wonders: Why didn’t Louvain report the ivory theft directly to the River Police? Why did he warn Monk not to investigate the murder of one of the Maude Idris crew? Even more mysterious, why has Louvain brought to Hester’s clinic a desperately ill woman who he claims is the discarded mistress of an old friend? Neither Hester nor Monk anticipates the nightmare answers to these questions . . . nor the trap that soon so fatefully ensnares them.In this magnificent novel, Anne Perry holds the reader spellbound, as Monk and Hester struggle to save themselves and their world from a catastrophe whose dimensions they can scarcely measure.From the Hardcover edition.

Commissioned to find the precious cargo of ivory stolen by river thieves from the hold of Clement Louvain's ocean-going schooner, private enquiry agent William Monk is intrigued by his new surroundings. The waterfront of the River Thames is a world unto itself, but without the help of the famed River Police, Monk hardly stands a chance of retrieving the ivory or tracking down the murderous men who killed an innocent crew member while robbing Louvain's ship. Not so coincidentally, Monk's wife Hester, who operates a shelter for sick and injured women of the streets, discovers that a woman with a mysterious connection to Louvain may hold the key to the missing ivory as well as many more deaths aboard his ship than the one Monk knows about. Perry's trademarked plotting, characterization, and verisimilitude in recreating Victorian London gleam brilliantly in this well-crafted historical mystery. --Jane Adams

The tragic death of a railway magnate in a sleazy brothel has shocked high society. Meanwhile, private investigator William Monk acquires a mysterious new client who asks him to ascertain beyond the shadow of a doubt whether or not her fiancé, a railway-firm executive, has become enmeshed in fraudulent practices. And so Monk embarks upon a journey that will revive memories stripped from his consciousness by amnesia—as a past almost impossible to bear returns, eerily paralleling a fresh tragedy that has already begun its inexorable unfolding.

Private enquiry agent William Monk is hired to investigate a potential case of fraud in the construction of a new railway line. His client is the fiancée of a man she fears is embroiled in the scheme, and Monk's investigation causes a strange sense of déjà vu--a former policeman afflicted with a case of amnesia concerning his prior life, Monk finds both the case and its milieu unsettlingly familiar. His case is somehow connected to the death of a railway magnate in a sleazy area of London where Monk's wife Hester, a nurse, operates a shelter for abused prostitutes. The women have been doubly victimized by an extortion scheme in which the dead man, who turns out to have been Monk's employer during his "lost" years, may have been involved. More than an ingenious way to fill in Monk's backstory, Anne Perry's newest mystery featuring the enigmatic investigator deepens the reader's understanding of an unusual and compelling protagonist and brings Victorian-era England vividly to life. --Jane Adams

For countless readers, one of life’s great pleasures is the mesmerizing magic of a Victorian mystery by New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. Her dramas of good and evil unfolding inside London’s lavish mansions and teeming slums hold us spellbound. Now, in Dark Assassin, she sweeps us into a darkly compelling world that we never dreamed existed.A Thames River Police superintendent struggling to win the respect of his men, William Monk is on a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge when he notices a young couple standing at the bridge railing, apparently engaged in an intense discussion. The woman waves her arms and places her hands on the man’s shoulders. A caress or a push? The man grasps hold of her. To save her or to kill her? Seconds later, the pair plunge to their death in the icy waters. Monk can’t help but wonder, was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? It seems impossible to determine the truth, but haunted by the woman’s somber beauty, he is impelled to try.Mary Havilland was her name, and she had planned to marry Toby Argyll, the fair-haired man who shared her fate. Mary’s father, an engineer employed by the Argyll Company, had recently died–a suicide, according to the police and Mary’s sister. But Mary’s friends tell Monk that she suspected her father had been murdered because of his stubborn insistence that the Argyll Company’s current project–the construction of a splendid new sewer system for the metropolis–was so badly flawed that it put the entire city in peril from flood and fire. Monk is now faced with the mysteries of the three deaths. Aided by his intrepid wife Hester, he starts looking for answers and is soon treading a slippery path that takes him from the luxurious drawing rooms where powerful men hatch their unscrupulous plots to a world beneath the city where poor folk fight starvation. In nightmarish tunnels, Monk and Hester find true friends, among them Scuff, a young mudlark; Sutton the ratcatcher; and Snoot, Sutton’s clever terrier. For once, even Monk’s old enemy, Superintendent Runcorn, is on his side. As rainfall strains the fragile manmade underground, Monk must connect the clues before death strikes again.With characters as vivid as Dickens’s, gripping courtroom scenes, breathless horrors beneath the earth, and a plot that twists and turns toward a stunning denouement, Dark Assassin is absolutely one of Anne Perry’s best.From the Hardcover edition.

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful and notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. This distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself is. Pitt’s journey to uncover the truth takes him from Egyptian cotton fields to the insidious London slum called Seven Dials, to a packed London courtroom where shocking secrets will at last be revealed.From the Hardcover edition.

London detective Thomas Pitt is investigating the murder of a junior diplomat by a notorious Egyptian woman and her lover, a senior Cabinet minister involved in negotiating the conflict between Egypt's cotton growers and England's textile industry. Lovat, the diplomat, once served in Egypt, and to unravel the mystery of his death, Pitt travels to Alexandria, where he finds that the beautiful Ayesha Zakhari is not who she appears to be--and that Lovat's murder may be tied to an old crime which, if exposed, could set the Middle East aflame. While Pitt is in Egypt, his wife, Charlotte, occupies herself with a more mundane matter--the disappearance of a valet whose sister is a friend of the Pitt's housemaid. It's not long before the reader realizes the connection between the two crimes; meanwhile, Perry layers this smoothly plotted mystery with a fascinating history of Egypt in the days of the British Empire and the religious and economic tensions whose repercussions still resonate more than a century later. Perry, the author of two Victorian-era series (the other stars investigator William Monk), does her usual fine job of bringing the colorful time period alive, helped along by the details of domestic life provided by her protagonists' wives, interesting and accomplished women who have lately played all but equal roles in solving their husbands' cases. --Jane Adams

When Countess Zorah Rostova asks London barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone to defend her against a charge of slander, he is astonished to find himself accepting. For without a shred of evidence, the countess has publicly insisted that the onetime ruler of her small German principality was murdered by his wife, the woman who was responsible for the prince’s exile to Venice twenty years before. Private investigator William Monk and his friend Hester Latterly journey to the City of Water in an attempt verify the countess’s claims, and though the two manage to establish that the prince was indeed murdered, as events unfold the likeliest suspect seems to be Countess Zorah herself.

Perry's series about Victorian-age investigator William Monk is one of the crown jewels of the genre, and her latest keeps the standards high. Called to the small German principality of Felzburg, Monk finds himself involved in aristocratic murder, slander and politics. Two eras are ending -- English innocence and the independence of little states like Felzburg -- and as Monk and his associates work on this case, their efforts are shadowed by clouds of coming conflicts.