In the ruins of Yorkshire’s Fountains Abbey lies the body of a man wrapped in a cloak, the face covered by a gas mask. Next to him is a book on alchemy, which belongs to the schoolmaster, a conscientious objector in the Great War. Who is this man, and is the investigation into his death being manipulated by a thirst for revenge? Meanwhile, the British War Office is searching for a missing man of their own, someone whose war work was so secret that even Rutledge isn’t told his real name or what he did.
Now, at last, the Orb was regained and the quest was nearing its end. Of course, the questors still had to escape from this crumbling enemy fortress and flee across a desert filled with Murgo soldiers searching for them, while Grolim Hierarchs strove to destroy them with dark magic.
This solid novel begins with young Lulu finding her mother dead and her sister wounded at the hands of her alcoholic father, who has failed at killing himself after attacking the family. Meyers traces the following 30 years for Lulu and her sister, Merry, as they are sent to an orphanage, where Lulu turns tough and calculating, searching for a way into an adoptive family. Eventually, Lulu becomes a doctor specializing in the almost old, though her secretiveness about her past causes new rifts to form in her new family.
Taking the stage that evening, Daisy Justine had no idea that she was auditioning for her life. Watching from the darkness beyond the footlights was the world-famous composer Jason Hayes. The reclusive genius was seeking a new star to play the tragic heroine in his latest work, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello. From the moment he heard her sing, Jason knew he'd found the star he'd been searching for his whole life. But coaxing her from Geneva to the bright lights of Broadway wasn't going to be easy. For she'd made a promise to another man that she couldn't break - nor disclose to anyone, not even Jason.
