Pleasures Of Men - Couverture souple

Spitalfields, 1840. Catherine Sorgeiul is nineteen and lives with her uncle in a rambling house in London’s East End. Sheltered and nervous, she has few companions and little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. But then a murderer strikes the city, ripping open the chests of young girls and stuffing hair into their mouths to resemble a beak, leading the press to christen him the Man of Crows. Catherine becomes obsessed with the grim crimes, and as she devours the news, she discovers she can channel the voices of the dead . . . and comes to believe she will eventually channel the Man of Crows himself.

The murders continue to incite panic in the city, and Catherine gradually realizes she has put herself in the centre of a deadly trap of sexual obsession, deceit and betrayal.

Elegant, mysterious and thrilling, The Pleasures of Men reveals the dark, beating heart of 19th-century London, where corruption and desperate desires lurked under a serene surface.

Kate Williams is the author of England’s Mistress: TheInfamous Life of Emma Hamilton, which is being developed for film and as astage musical, and which was shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Award. Hersecond book, Becoming Queen, was a book of the year in The Spectatorand Tatler. She is also the author of Young Elizabeth, an accountof the early life of Elizabeth II. Williams is a lecturer and TV consultant,appearing regularly on the BBC and Channel 4. She studied at Oxford and at theUniversity of London, and now teaches at Royal Holloway, University of London.She is currently writing a biography of Joséphine Bonaparte, as well as hersecond novel. Visit her online at kate-williams.com.