St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

A grieving widower and his infant son. A house full of opportunists. A young woman watching her chance slip away. George Carleton St. John has just lost his wife Caroline moments after she gave birth to their son Benjamin. At Alnwick Hall, the somber atmosphere of death collides with the calculating ambitions of those who see opportunity in his loss. Mrs. Darling has positioned her daughter Charlotte perfectly for a match with the young master of the estate - but grief makes strange bedfellows, and the path to happiness is anything but straightforward. Mrs. Henry Wood, the celebrated author of "East Lynne," constructs a richly atmospheric tale where love, jealousy, and social maneuvering unfold against the shadow of premature death. The novel explores what remains when everything familiar is stripped away: the duties that bind us, the affection we cannot choose, and the question of whether happiness can ever grow in the soil of profound loss.