The Crystal Rose

by Rebecca Brandewyne

Book Overview

England, 1850: As she makes her way through London's crowded streets, Rose Windermere is nearly knocked to the ground by a man who whispers a dire warning...and presses a letter into her hands before fleeing. The letter seems innocuous enough--merely plans for a gentleman to meet his lover. But for Rose, the mark with which it is sealed recalls her idyllic childhood in India and a world that was destroyed one terrible night, when an uprising left her dearest friend, Hugo, dead. Amidst a city enthralled by its Great Exhibition, Rose is pulled back into the exotic land of her youth, as the past comes unimaginably alive. Caught in a web of deceit and intrigue, she must unravel the strange machinations of a man whose lust for power will threaten a monarchy--and Rose's own heart.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0778322963
• ISBN13: 9780778322962
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Mira Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

exhilarating Victorian romantic suspense

In 1835 Delhi, India, Lord Thornleigh's haveli (home) is on fire. Young Rose Windermere watches the blaze from her window next door and worries that her best friend thirteen year old Hugo Drayton, Thornleigh's son, will die in the inferno. Rose and her family survive the conflagration while the Thornleigh brood including Hugo is assumed to be all dead. A sad Rose believes that her pal survived because she knows she would somehow feel a loss inside if he died. Her family returns to England soon after the fiery debacle while Hugo lives in hiding saved by his man-servant Mayur Singh though his parents were murdered in the fire as a cover-up. Years later in Covent Garden, a stranger slips a letter into the hand of Rose that says very little that makes sense to her. However, when she meets an Indian businessman, Rose feels she knows him from most likely her time in the subcontinent. She goes with her gut and soon encounters Hugo alive and well with a plan to expose his odious cousin as an avaricious murderer of his uncle and aunt in India over fifteen years ago and now is involved in a conspiracy against the throne. This is an exhilarating Victorian romantic suspense that grips the audience with the vivid opening sequence in which the reader sees the fire through the eyes of Rose. The story line contains several twists afterward though seems a bit over the edge with the unneeded threat to Queen Victoria, as Hugo has enough on his plate to prove his relative is a cold blooded killer and the show he loves his childhood sweetheart with an adult love. Historical romance readers will enjoy Rebecca Brandewyne's fine thriller. Harriet Klausner