OF HOAXES AND HOMICIDE

Half sisters come to a better understanding of each other while solving a murder in 1885 London.

Violet Manville, the practical older sister with wide-ranging interests, has been asked by her aunt Adelia to keep up her advice column while she’s away. Younger sister Sephora is more interested in clothes, men, and penny dreadfuls, especially those of Count Orlando, who’s writing a series purporting to expose the outrageous goings-on of a cultlike group he dubs the Children of Ud. Violet, who’s bored and missing the company of Eli Marsh, an American who helped her in a previous adventure, is forced to pay attention to the nonfictional group The Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed because a woman whose daughter ran off to join them has written to her for advice. She reluctantly brings Sephora along to a meeting of the group in a London park. The crowd is disappointed by the mild speech of the charismatic Master, but Violet is shocked to see among his acolytes Margaret Thuringer, Sephora’s best friend, who’s apparently the missing daughter mentioned in the letter. When a man Violet had thought was a pickpocket snatches one of the devotees, she foils his attempt and is thanked by the Master, who invites her to join the cult in the ruins of Alburn Abbey. Eli, whom Violet has recognized as the abductor, meets secretly with her at the abbey. When Margaret is arrested for murdering a man she was unhappily handfasted with, Violet, Eli, and even Sephora realize that nothing is as it seems.

Mystery, romance, and an interesting look at the power of cult leaders.