Miss Mephistopheles: A Novel

Melbourne, 1880s: a city of gaslit theatres and newspaper offices where a young writer named Keith Stewart chases literary fame. When he saves a child from oncoming traffic, he doesn't expect the mother to be Caprice, Melbourne's most celebrated actress, a woman whose beauty and notoriety have made her the talk of the colony. Ezra Lazarus, a sharp-tongued journalist whose own ambitions mirror Keith's, becomes an unlikely friend and rival in love. What begins as gratitude deepens into something more complicated, as Caprice's scandalous past and Keith's own literary dreams collide with the demands of Victorian society. Hume, who previously gave the world "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," weaves a tale of artistic ambition, romantic entanglement, and the price of fame in a colonial city desperate to prove it possesses culture equal to London. The theatre becomes a stage for more than performances.