The Glass of Time

  

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox.

 

Hardcover : 592 pages
ISBN-10 : 0393067734

 

 

Amazon Review:

 

Building on his "superb" (Washington Post) debut, The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox returns to a murderous nineteenth-century England.

Like its "beguiling" and "intelligent" (New York Times Book Review) predecessor, The Glass of Time is a page turning period mystery about identity, the nature of secrets, and what happens when past obsessions impose themselves on an unwilling present. In the autumn of 1876, nineteen year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at the great country house of Evenwood to become a lady's maid to the twenty-sixth Baroness Tansor. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l'Orme, to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal, and to set right a past injustice in which Esperanza's own life is bound up. At Evenwood she meets Lady Tansor's two dashing sons, Perseus and Randolph, and finds herself enmeshed in a complicated web of seduction, intrigue, deceit, betrayal, and murder. Few writers are as gifted at evoking the sensibility of the nineteenth century as Michael Cox, who has made the world of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins his own.

 

 Another really good book by Michael Cox.  This one follows The Meaning of Night, and tells how the lives of many of the characters in the first book fair after 20 years have gone by.

Once again, lots of mystery!  Lots of  "family secrets", and lots of unique ways that things happen and those same things manage to be found out. (Which means.. also, lots of surprises.)

Many authors make me wonders how their minds work to come up with such good stories !

I would advise that in order to enjoy this particular book that you really need to read, The Meaning of Night first.