Twice winner of the Romantic Novelist of the Year Award, Janey Morris (a.k.a. Rosie Thomas, http://rosiethomasauthor.com/) writes compellingly of love and loss. Her latest masterpiece will wring your heart out like the spin cycle of a powerful German washing machine. The summary is as follows. London in 1870 is a terrifying place for a young, beautiful woman of limited means. But Eliza is modern before her time. Not for her the stifling if respectable conventionality of marriage, children, domestic drudgery. She longs for more. There is a diamond quality within her which is something so strong. Through her work as an artist’s model, she meets the magnetic and irascible Devil – a born showman whose dream is to run his own theatre company. Devil’s right-hand man is the improbably-named Carlo Bonomi, an ill-tempered dwarf with an enormous talent for all things magic and illusion. Carlo and Devil clash at every opportunity and it constantly falls upon Eliza to broker an uneasy peace between them. And then there is Jasper Button. Mild-mannered, and a family man at heart, it is his gift as an artist which makes him the unlikely final member of the motley crew. Thrown together by a twist of fate, their lives are inextricably linked: the fortune of one depends on the fortune of the other. And as Eliza gets sucked into the seductive and dangerous world her strange companions inhabit, she risks not only her heart, but also her life…How will it all end?
Enquire at your local library or available in paperback at http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Illusionists-Rosie-Thomas/dp/0007512023/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1393161294&sr=8-1
336 pages in Harper Collins paperback edition
ISBN 978-0007512027
Rosie Thomas