Dorchester Terrace

Anne Perry's acclaimed Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels have made London's exclusive worldof wealth and power an addictive literary destination for readers everywhere.This new masterpiece, a haunting story of love and treason, invites us not onlyinto the secret places of Britain's power but also into the innermost sanctumsof the fin de siècleAustro-Hungarian Empire.

Thomas Pitt, once a lowly policeman, is now the powerful head of Britain'sSpecial Branch, and some people fear that he may have been promoted beyond hisabilities. He, too, feels painful moments of self-doubt, especially as rumorsreach him of a plot to blow up connections on the Dover-London rail line-onwhich Austrian duke Alois Habsburg is soon to travel to visit his royal Englishkin.

Why would anyone destroy an entire train to kill one obscure Austrian royal, orare the rumors designed to distract Pitt from an even more devastating plot? Hemust resolve this riddle at once, before the damage is done.

Meanwhile, in a London sickroom, an old Italian woman-at the end of a romanticcareer as a revolutionary spy-is terrified that as she sinks into dementia, shemay divulge secrets that can kill. And a beautiful young Croatian woman,married to a British power broker, hoards her own mysteries. Apparently allroads lead to the Continent, and Pitt suspects that between them these twofascinating women could tell him things he desperately needs to know. But asthe hours tick by, it seems that the only woman Pitt can count on is his cleverwife, Charlotte.

No one sustains mesmerizing suspense better than Anne Perry. In Pitt'strial by fire, his wrenching moral dilemma, and his electrifying moment ofdecision, the beloved bestselling author gives us a climax never to beforgotten.

Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set inVictorian England: the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Treasonat Lisson Grove and Buckingham Palace Gardens, and theWilliam Monk novels, including Acceptable Loss and Execution Dock.She is also the author of a series of five World War I novels, as well as nineholiday novels, most recently A Christmas Homecoming, and a historicalnovel, The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Ottoman Empire. Anne Perrylives in Scotland.