Kate Ardleigh is everything the Victorian English gentlewoman is not—outspoken, free-thinking, American...and a writer of the frowned upon "penny-dreadfuls." When Kate arrives in Essex, England, she shocks the household at Bishop's Keep—and captures the interest of amateur detective Sir Charles Sheridan as they begin their first case together.

A dead body has been uncovered at a nearby archeological dig. The investigation provides the perfect research for Kate's fiction. But the curious writer may be digging too deep—especially when the trail leads her into a secret occult society known as the Order of the Golden Dawn...