"delightful Victorian romantic suspense"

Knowing her family needs money, photographer Venetia Milton obtains a gig at isolated Arcane House where she plans to seduce her employer Gabriel Jones. She succeeds on both parts, but feels despondent when she has to leave as she believes she is in love. However, not long afterward, she reads in the newspaper that her beloved died.

Feeling like a widow, Venetia pretends that she and Gabriel were married. To her shock, Gabriel arrives at her home. Apparently, he arranged his death to fool his enemies who want his secrets that he possesses as the current ancestor of an alchemist who formed a clandestine society to study psychic phenomena; Venetia hides the fact that she sees auras from her "guest". As they fall in love, they team up to uncover killers, blackmailers, and thieves who covet both their secrets in a world filled with masquerades in which SECOND SIGHT can prove misleading.

This is a delightful Victorian romantic suspense with a touch of the paranormal. The story line balances the kissing scenes with the perilous escapades so that the audience obtains a quick-paced fun thriller. Venetia is a wonderful protagonist struggling with her secrets including her desire for her "late" employer while Gabriel battles his enemies but has revised his life goals as he reciprocates his employee's desires. Historical romance fans will enjoy this charming couple who either are in the fire or causing the fire.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 2, 2006

The first book in the new Amanda Quick series featuring the Arcane Society. This is historical romantic-suspense with a psychic twist.

Summary

Financially straitened and on the path to spinsterhood, Venetia Milton thought her stay at the remote, ramshackle Arcane House would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engineer her own ravishment. She was there to photograph the artifacts collected by a highly secretive organization, founded two centuries earlier by an alchemist. And the alchemist's descendant-her employer, Gabriel Jones-has the eyes of a sorcerer.

But despite Venetia's intent to seduce Mr. Jones and move on, she is shattered upon her return home to read in the press of his violent demise. Using the sizable fee Mr. Jones paid her, Venetia establishes a new life, opening a gallery in London. Of course, posing as a respectable widow makes it easier to do business, so-in a private tribute to her lost, only lover-she assumes the identity of "Mrs. Jones."

Her romantic whim, however, will cause unexpected trouble. For one thing, Mr. Jones is about to stride, living and breathing, back into Venetia's life. And the two share more than a passionate memory-indeed, they are bonded by a highly unusual sort of vision, one that goes far beyond Venetia's abilities as a photographer. They also share a terrible threat-for someone has stolen a centuries-old notebook from Arcane House that contains a formula believed to enhance psychic powers of the kind Gabriel and Venetia possess. And the thief wants to know more-even if he must kill the keeper of the Arcane Society's treasures, or the photographer who catalogued them, to obtain such knowledge.