The Byronic Book Club

Artemis Jones—respectable finishing-school teacher by day and Gothic-romance writer by night—has never lost sight of her real dream: to open her own academic ladies' college. When she’s unexpectedly called upon by a dear friend, a fellow Byronic Book Club member, to navigate her first London Season, she comes at once—who knows, perhaps she can court the interest of a wealthy patron for her school. It’ll all be fine as long as she can avoid her high-handed aunt's schemes to marry her off.

Miss Lucy Bertram is content to spend her days writing scientific articles or curling up with a Gothic romance novel. Indeed, she'd rather stick a hatpin in her eye than attend a ball. But when her father, the eccentric botanist Sir Oswald, insists she accept the suit of a wealthy but stiffer-than-a-poker industrialist to save the family from penury, Lucy decides to act. She's certain her disowned brother, Monty, will take her side. But first she must find him in St. Giles's cutthroat rookeries.