Joss: a Reversion

In late Victorian London, Mary Blyth's life shatters in a single afternoon: robbed, nearly murdered, and cast out from her position as a sales clerk. When a distant relative named Benjamin Batters dies and leaves her his house, she dares to believe fortune has finally smiled. But the inheritance proves a curse wrapped in brick and mortar. Within those walls lurk murderous thugs, and something far more insidious, a malignant force from the Far East that the locals whisper about in terrified tones. Something called The Joss. Something that represents a reversion to older, darker powers that should have remained buried. Richard Marsh, whose sensation novel "The Beetle" outsold "Dracula" upon its 1897 release, crafts a gothic masterpiece that explores what happens when modern womanhood collides with ancient evil. This is Victorian sensation fiction at its most transgressive, a reminder that the era's obsession with the exotic East was never entirely innocent.