Queen Victoria, still mourning her long-dead husband Prince Albert, has found solace in John Brown, an enigmatic palace servant who dabbles in the occult and keeps the grieving queen entertained with his tarot card readings. Undertaker Violet Harper is invited to attend one of Mr. Brown's infamous readings, during which he implies that Buckingham Palace will soon be shrouded in death's dark veil. Well acquainted with death, Violet shrugs him off as a charlatan—until his sinister divinations begin to prove true . . .
Violet wonders if something foul is in the cards when the aristocratic young friends of the queen's daughter begin to die under mysterious circumstances. Her suspicions only grow when one of London's "moralists," a group bent on repealing the law that forces prostitutes into hospitals, suffers a similar fate. The deaths merely buttress the queen's enthusiasm for Mr. Brown's ominous talents, and, concerned by the fortuneteller's influence, Violet races against time to unearth the truth before the killer strikes again. But as she closes in on a murderer with an unearthly motive, Violet realizes she may be digging her own grave . . .
By turns heart wrenching and hopeful, A Virtuous Death is a gripping tale of fortitude besieged by vengeance inside the extraordinary world of Queen Victoria's court.
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Christine Trent is the author of the Lady of Ashes mysteries, the Florence Nightingale mysteries, and several other historical novels. She writes from her two-story home library, where she lives with her husband, precocious cats, a large doll collection, too many fountain pens, and over four thousand catalogued books.
Polly Lee, an Earphones Award–winning narrtor, is an actress from London who has appeared in the off-Broadway shows Lenin’s Embalmer’s, Close Ties, Slag Heap, The October Crisis, and others. She received her BA degree in theater studies from London University and an MFA from the New School in New York.