The Beautiful White Devil

Hong Kong, 1896. Dr. George De Normanville has heard the whispers among the colonial officers: a woman called the Beautiful White Devil moves through the South China Sea like a ghost, suspected of heists and abductions, her true name known to none. When a mysterious stranger named Horace Venderbrun offers the young doctor a lucrative commission to treat a smallpox outbreak on a remote island, De Normanville leaps at the chance. But the island never materializes. Instead, he finds himself battling pirates on a Chinese junk, clinging to life as the vessel sinks beneath him, until he is hauled aboard the most luxurious yacht he has ever seen and comes face to face with the legend herself. What follows is a darkly seductive game of cat and mouse, as the doctor struggles to discern whether the Beautiful White Devil is villain, victim, or something far more complicated than the stories suggest. Guy Boothby crafts a deliciously melodramatic adventure that pulses with colonial-era exotica, naval danger, and the intoxicating thrill of a woman who refuses to be categorized. It is a book that understands the particular poison of attraction to danger.