A renowned warrior, Brynhild Grimsdotter, and her biographer, William Barding, aid a young girl seeking vengeance for the murder of her father, a trinket-bearer and victim of the king's obsession with finding occult artifacts. When a madman resurrects from the shadows to exact revenge upon the land of White Cloud, they must join forces with a deadly assassin and a mysterious knight to save its inhabitants. And then kill the king. But the girl's desire for vengeance may very well aid the madman they are determined to stop.

"Remarkable...for fans of fantasy-inflected historicals such as Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent." —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review "A sumptuous reading experience." —BookPage It will take something extraordinary to show four women who they truly are... October 1840. A young woman staggers alone through a forest in the English countryside as a huge pair of impossible wings rip themselves from her shoulders. In London, rumors of a "fallen angel" cause a frenzy across the city, and a surgeon desperate for fame and fortune finds himself in the grips of a dangerous obsession, one that will place the women he seeks in the most terrible danger . . . The Gifts is an astonishing novel, a spellbinding tale told through five different perspectives and set against the luminous backdrop of nineteenth century London, it explores science, nature and religion, enlightenment, the role of women in society and the dark danger of ambition.

Offers five plays that feature witty banter, farcical situations, and flamboyant characters, including "The School for Scandal," in which the rumor mill goes into overdrive after a man marries a woman who may be involved in an extramarital affair.