Phantom Fortune, A Novel

Forty years of silence cannot bury a family's shame. Lady Maulevrier ruled London society in her youth, a beauty who married for money rather than love. When her husband vanished from England under a cloud of scandal involving something unspeakable in India, she retreated into shadow, raising her two granddaughters in diminishing circumstances. Mary, the plain elder sister, possesses spirit and intelligence but little of the beauty her grandmother adores. Lesbia, the favored youngest, is weaponized loveliness destined for great things, or at least a wealthy marriage. As the sisters navigate the treacherous waters of Victorian marriage markets, Mary finds unexpected happiness while Lesbia ascends under the wing of a mysterious patron. But the phantom fortune that haunts their name, the crime that drove Lord Maulevrier into exile, threatens to surface and destroy everything they've built. Braddon's sensation novel dissects the brutal mathematics of Victorian inheritance: who gets to be loved, who gets married, and what skeletons pay for it all.