The House on Durrow Street [Paperback]

“A charming and mannered fantasy confection with a darker core of gothic romance” is howNew York Timesbestselling author Robin Hobb described Galen Beckett’s marvelous series opener,The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. Now Beckett returns to this world of dazzling magick and refined manners, where one extraordinary woman’s choice will put the fate of a nation—and all she cherishes—into precarious balance.
 
Her courage saved the country of Altania and earned the love of a hero of the realm. Now sensible Ivy Quent wants only to turn her father’s sprawling, mysterious house into a proper home. But soon she is swept into fashionable society’s highest circles of power—a world that is vital to her family’s future but replete with perilous temptations.

Yet far greater danger lies beyond the city’s glittering ballrooms—and Ivy must race to unlock the secrets that lie within the old house on Durrow Street before outlaw magicians and an ancient ravening force plunge Altania into darkness forever.What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices that confront a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Galen Beckett began writing the stories of the Lockwell sisters to answer that question.CHAPTER ONE



IVY WOKE TO the sound of voices.

She sat up and reached for Mr. Quent beside her, wondering if he had murmured something in his sleep as he often did. Her hand found only a cold tangle of bedclothes. He was gone--a fact her dull mind recalled after a moment--off to the north of Altania on business for the lord inquirer. He had left nearly a quarter month ago and would not return before Darkeve at the end of the month.

Besides, it was not from inside the bedchamber that the murmuring had come.

Ivy rose, gathering a nightgown around her, for it was late in a long umbral and the colS,