First published 2012
Lady Kiera Darby arrived at her sister's Scottish estate to disappear. Her husband is dead, and she wants nothing more than to paint in peace and put her years as an anatomist's wife behind her. Then her brother-in-law fills the house with London society guests, and the whispers follow her inside. They say she is unnatural, complicit in her husband's dissections, tainted by his work on cadavers. When one of the guests turns up murdered, Kiera's brother-in-law asks her to do the one thing she has been trying to stop doing: use what she knows about human anatomy. He pairs her with Sebastian Gage, a guest who has worked as an inquiry agent. Kiera finds Gage insufferable. She also finds him more capable than she expected, which makes keeping her guard up harder than she would like. The investigation pulls them deeper into the estate's secrets. More bodies surface. Anonymous notes arrive, warning Kiera to walk away. She refuses. Her family's safety is at stake, and so is her own reputation. Clearing her name means finishing what she started, even as the killer's attention turns toward her.
Genres: romance, historical-fiction, mystery, adult, adult-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, mysterious, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-detective, enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, slow-burn
Setting: Scotland, London
Period: 19th century
357 pages · Paperback · Berkley
Content warnings: death, murder