The Quick
“Ambitious, elegant, atmospheric, and often deeply poignant, The Quick is a seamless blend of Victorian London and rich imagination. This is a book to savor.”
Tana French, Edgar Award–winning author of In the Woods
London, 1892. James Norbury, a shy would-be poet newly down from Oxford, finds lodging with a charming young aristocrat. Through this new friendship, he is introduced to the drawing rooms of high society, and finds love in an unexpected quarter. Then, suddenly, he vanishes without a trace. Unnerved, his sister, Charlotte, sets out from their crumbling country estate determined to find him. In the sinister, labyrinthine city that greets her, she uncovers a secret world at the margins populated by unforgettable characters: a female rope walker turned vigilante, a street urchin with a deadly secret, and the chilling "Doctor Knife." But the answer to her brother's disappearance ultimately lies within the doors of one of the country's preeminent and mysterious institutions—The Aegolius Club, whose members include the most ambitious, and most dangerous, men in England.
In her astonishing debut novel, Lauren Owen has created a fantastical world of epic scope that is both beguiling and terrifying. The Quick will establish her as one of fiction's most dazzling talents.
Praise