Items related to Unnatural Fire
"Fans of light historical mysteries are sure to be amused." PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY Anastasia Ashby de la Zouch, Baroness Penge, Countess of Clapham and former mistress to Charles ll, has fallen on hard times. Forced to turn to journalism, the Countess and her maidservant, Alpiew, gather salacious tit-bits for a scandal sheet. But they encounter more than they had bargained for when a mysterious woman hires them to follow her husband, Beau, whom she suspects of adultery. Their pursuit leads them to playhouses and lecture halls, only to end abruptly in a Covent Garden churchyard. The pair find themselves implicated in murder and to establish the identity of the real killer they must penetrate the mysteries of alchemy. UNNATURAL FIRE is a wonderfully funny, audacious romp with a vivid cast of characters.
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Review:
A boisterous, bawdy romp through Restoration England, Unnatural Fire introduces a pair of unlikely heroines and sets them on a merry chase through London just before the dawn of the 18th century. The Countess Ashby de la Zouche has lost her place in society with the death of Charles II, her former paramour, and the subsequent disappearance of her husband, a swindler who's gone to America to seek his fortune. Languishing in debtor's prison, she's soon rediscovered by her erstwhile maid Alpiew, whose circumstances aren't much better than her former employer's. But the two women swiftly discover how to turn their shared fondness for gossip into a tidy livelihood as stringers for an infamous scandal sheet. Hired by a wealthy matron to get the goods on her philandering husband, they stumble on a murder that sets this fast-paced, funny story in motion. The mystery mixes royal intrigue, theatrical shenanigans, cross-dressing strangers, and secret formulas into a delicious potion brewed by an actor and playwright who specializes in Restoration comedy. Author Fidelis Morgan's thorough familiarity with the period informs every paragraph of this delightful historical romp. --Jane Adams
About the Author:
Fidelis Morgan is an actor and an expert in Restoration comedy. Acclaimed for her stage plays, Pamela and Hangover Square, she also collaborated with Lynda la Plante on England's Channel 4's tense pschological thriller Killer Net. She has written nonfiction studies of charismatic female figures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and contributed to the bestselling Virago anthology Wicked. In her first novel, Unnatural Fire, she combined historical interest with her life-long passion for crime fiction.
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- PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Ltd
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0007126530
- ISBN 13 9780007126538
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages368
- Rating
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