The Red Lottery Ticket

In the Paris of the ancien regime's final days, two young men ride across the Pont des Arts with nothing but ambition and handsome faces. George Caumont and Adhemar de Puymirol have a simple plan: marry money. The city offers plenty of heiresses, and these two have the connections, the charm, and the complete absence of fortune required to make a strategic match. Then a stranger hurls a pocket-book into their cab and vanishes. Inside: a red lottery ticket and letters from someone who claims to know dangerous secrets. What begins as a scheme for social elevation suddenly becomes something far more sinister - a game where the stakes might be lives, not just dowries. Du Boisgobey writes with the addictive pace of a serial thriller and the sharp eye of a social satirist. This is a portrait of a city obsessed with wealth and respectability, where young men must barter themselves into prosperity and mystery lurks in every dropped pocket-book. For readers who want the gossip of Thackeray with the momentum of a penny dreadful.