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THE GALLANT Glasgow, 1866. James Dwelly must live with secrets. He is a man with a Secret Sense — a Redolence, with extraordinary scent; every odour in the world is locked in his memory, and his breaths hold the power of mesmerism. Afraid to face his feelings for Niall Bowen, Dwelly flees to Mingulay, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, a broken and distant man hounded by the fear of his secrets. After a tragic accident, he is wrongly convicted of murder and banished to Mingulay’s foreboding lighthouse as the new keeper. Soon he confronts a greater foe: the Seonaidh, a monstrous, bloodthirsty pirate burning with the internal fire of a bilious humour. The trove of curious books in the lighthouse’s peculiar library, and his own extraordinary secret sense, propel him to the mystery of defeating the murderous Seonaidh.

THE LAIRS London, 1878. Lord Edmund Audger craves one thing — fame — but he lacks the talent to achieve it. After attending a play written by brilliant playwright Oliver Ramsay, Lord Audger makes a plan: he kidnaps the playwright and imprisons him in the underground of his abbey, and then forces him to write a play that Lord Audger will then take credit for himself. The scheme works brilliantly, and Lord Audger ups the ante: He demands a second play from Ramsay, even greater than the first; if Ramsay does not comply, his actress daughter will be killed. But the abbey ghost — an Italian architect and artist — takes pity on Ramsay, and makes a plan of his own. The novel is written in seven points of view, including Audger, his conniving mother, his unreliable best friend, and his loyal maid; and then Ramsay, Ramsay’s daughter, and the abbey ghost.

THE AUTHORESS London, 1855. Julia Barraday is the wife of Elliott Barraday, Governor of the Female Convict Prison at Brixton. Feeling trapped within the prison’s walls, as if she were a prisoner herself, Julia longs for escape through her beloved books. She makes it her mission to get books in the hands of the convicts as well. Thwarted at every turn, she goes underground with her plan and turns to dealing books as contraband. Suddenly empowered, she secretly begins to write a book of her own, against her husband’s wishes. When her book turns violent, art begins to imitate life.