The Mesmerist's Victim

Paris, 1770. The city assembles for the grand wedding of the Dauphin and Marie-Antoinette, and the air crackles with celebration, but also with something more dangerous: the whispers of change sweeping through France. Into this volatile crowd step Andrea and Philip Taverney, siblings attempting to navigate the chaos when the festivities spiral into pandemonium. A young man named Gilbert fights desperately through the throng, driven by feelings for Andrea that will only complicate the tension. What begins as a romantic rescue drawn against the breathtaking backdrop of courtly splendor soon deepens into something far darker, as the sinister arts of mesmerism weave through the narrative and threaten to bind these fates together. Dumas weaves personal desire against the larger machinery of social transformation, capturing a society perched on the edge of upheaval. The novel pulses with romantic intrigue, Gothic suspense, and the tragic awareness that the old world is dying. For readers who crave historical fiction that combines passionate storytelling with the electricity of pre-revolutionary France.