The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (Hardcover)

It begins with a simple note: Roger Bascombe wishes to inform Celeste Temple that their engagement is forthwith terminated. Celeste is determined to find out why her fiance should have thrown her over so cruelly. Adopting a disguise, she follows him to the forbidding Harschmort manor, where she discovers a conspiracy so terrifying as to be almost beyond belief. With translation rights sold in twenty-five countries, Gordon Dahlquist's spectacular and extraordinary debut novel was one of the most-talked-about acquisitions of 2005. Now this monumental Victorian thriller is destined to be the publishing sensation of 2006.
It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection from Miss Temple's fiance, written on crisp Ministry paper and delivered on her maid's silver tray. But for Miss Temple, Roger Bascombe's cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for answers, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors--and a remote estate where danger abounds and all inhibitions are stripped bare....Thus begins Gordon Dahlquist's debut novel of Victorian suspense--at once a dazzling feast for the senses and a beguiling, erotic literary adventure.
Nothing could have prepared Miss Temple for where her pursuit of Roger Bascombe would take her--or for the shocking things she would find behind the closed doors of forbidding Harschmort Manor: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic--both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. As the unlikely trio search for answers--hurtling them from elegant brothels to gaslit alleyways to shocking moments of self-discovery-- they are confronted by puzzles within puzzles. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their lives are in danger. For the conspiracy they face--an astonishing alchemy of science, perverted religion, and lust for power--is so terrifying as to be beyond belief.
In a novel that shatters conventions and seethes with danger and eroticism, Gordon Dahlquist has made a spectacular literary debut. And in Miss Temple he has created an unforgettable guide through a disturbing, seductive, and all-too-real world. By turns brutal and tender, shocking and deliciously romantic, The Glass Books of The Dream Eaters is a novel for the ages, a bold and brilliant work of the imagination"