A Death Along the River Fleet

Lucy Campion, a ladies' maid turned printer's apprentice in 17th-century London, is crossing Holborn Bridge over the most vile portion of the River Fleet one morning when she encounters a distraught young woman, barely able to speak and clad only in a blood-spattered nightdress. According to the local townspeople, the woman is mad, afflicted with the devil's tongue. But Lucy is concerned for the woman's well-being and takes her to a physician. When, shockingly, the woman is identified as the daughter of a nobleman, Lucy is asked to temporarily give up her bookselling duties to discreetly serve as the woman's companion while she remains under the physician's care. As the woman recovers over the month of April 1667, she begins-with Lucy's help-to reconstruct the terrible event that occurred on the bridge, as well as the disturbing events that preceded it. But when the woman is attacked again, Lucy becomes unwillingly privy to a plot with far-reaching social implications, and she'll have to decide how far she's willing to go to protect the young woman in her care.

SUSANNA CALKINS became fascinated with seventeenth-century England while pursuing her doctorate in British history and uses her fiction to explore this chaotic period. Originally from Philadelphia, Calkins now lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two sons. This is her fourth novel.