Fiona Mahoney chases Jack the Ripper from the shadows of Whitechapel into the most infamous brothels of Victorian London’s thriving sex trade, where secrets are exchanged as currency, and the bodies of murdered women leave a lethal trail to follow…

London, 1890:
It's a New Year, but murder never takes a holiday.

The past reaches out to the unlikely investigative team of Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe when a man she was once engaged to marry seeks her assistance to find his young runaway son.

However, a simple case of following the clues left behind becomes far more as the search unravels her former fiancé’s secrets.

What is real or only an illusion?

Ghostly images that appear and float across the stage, objects that levitate into the air, and a beautiful assistant who disappears inside a glass box, then reappears inside a second glass box. All while the audience at the Crystal Palace, including amateur investigator Mikaela Forsythe, watch the performance.

Is it real? Can the audience believe what they see?

Fiona Mahoney’s past returns to haunt her present as a prizefighter from her hometown becomes the only suspect in a gruesome, high-society murder.

No one in London knows what befell Fiona’s family back in Ireland.
At least, no one left alive.

1889

With the wild chase for the late unlamented duke's diamonds finally over, business is booming for Flora Flowerdew's seance society, but she's bored with summoning ghosts with the help of her psychic Pomeranian Chou-Chou.

A THIRTY YEAR OLD MURDER...
Old Town, Edinburgh, in a squalid tenement where poverty, rats, and disease are rampant, a young woman who worked in a local tavern lies dying. Just another number and bound for a pauper's grave in Greyfriar's kirkyard.

Lancelot Nowlton, Viscount Lakehurst, writes gothic novels.

The widow Lady Cassandra Tidemark, Marchioness of Darkford, is living a gothic nightmare.

The young marchioness is haunted by nightmarish visions of a past she can't escape. The memory of her husband's death, shrouded in a ritualistic mystery reminiscent of Sir Francis Dashwood's notorious Hell Fire club, casts a chilling pall over her life.

By chance, Cassandra reads a bestselling gothic novel penned by the elusive ‘Anonymous’ that describes what happened that night. To her shock, she discovers that Viscount Lakehurst is the author, and she accuses him of her husband's murder.

A photograph taken of the daughter of one of London’s most prominent citizens in a private setting sets Brodie and Mikaela off on a new inquiry case to find out who took the photograph and then sent it to the family.

The case begins simply enough until the young woman goes missing. Then, the family receives another photograph of their daughter who is obviously quite dead and that simple inquiry case has now become an investigation of murder.

Sir James Redstone has recently returned from abroad.

He is handsome, well-educated, heir to the Redstone title and family fortune, and a fellow traveler of Mikaela Forsythe.
He is also a member of the royal inner circle, close friend of the Prince of Wales, and well known to Mikaela’s aunt, Lady Antonia Montgomery.

In the past he and Mikaela traveled in the same group to Egypt and the Far East. They share the experience of that adventure that she has written about in her first novel.

Now, Redstone has returned with tales of other travels that Mikaela might have made if not for the recent change in her relationship with Brodie.

Ghosts of the past…

The very case that made Brodie leave the Metropolitan Police returns to jeopardize his private inquiry business, his relationship with Mikaela Forsythe, and perhaps even his life.

Jack, be nimble. Jack, be quick.

Tossed into a life of shame and poverty after the death of her secret fiancé, Ginevra Allen struggles to make ends meet on the terrifying streets of 1888 London. Her exceptional skill with the violin soon gains her a name as a performer, and before she realizes it, she has been swept back into the aristocratic world that abandoned her. But Old Jacky has his eye on her now…