A Strange Scottish Shore

July 3, 2017
Set in 1906, Gray’s winning sequel to 2016’s A Most Extraordinary Pursuit finds the charming and eminently sensible Emmeline Truelove boarding a train for Scotland at London’s King Cross Station. Emmeline’s employer, Max Haywood, Duke of Olympia, who’s an amateur archeologist, has urgently requested that she join him in the north of Scotland. Well into her journey, Emmeline has a vision of the late Queen Victoria, who warns her of a man on the train who has followed her from London. Another passenger, a handsome rake who has proposed to Emmeline, later confronts this man, who escapes by jumping off the train. The intrigue continues in Scotland, where Max and Emmeline examine a strange artifact found in a ruined castle—a suit of clothing that according to legend once belonged to a selkie. Sinister others, the two discover, want to get their hands on this artifact. Gray smoothly blends fantasy elements into the twisty plot, which builds to a shocking yet satisfying climax. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners.

July 15, 2017
A woman who researches historical anachronisms must travel through time to rescue her love interest.Having worked for the royal family of Olympia for as long as she can remember, Emmeline Truelove thinks nothing of being asked to go on a mysterious adventure even though Max, the Duke of Olympia, offers little in the way of background for what she's supposed to do. That's how Miss Truelove finds herself on a train with a leather portfolio containing an object whose meaning she's not sure of. Max is a collector of historical anachronisms and unusual pieces, so Miss Truelove doesn't think there's much unusual about the task at hand or the mysterious stranger who's been tailing her since she left London. Her journey is interrupted by the one person sure to distract her, Lord Silverton, the Marquess of Silverton. The two haven't seen each other since the playboy promised to give up his free-loving ways and marry Miss Truelove, an offer she somehow managed to refuse. When the stranger tailing Miss Truelove is revealed as more foe than friend, Silverton vanishes in the ensuing scuffle, leaving Miss Truelove to return to Max with more questions than answers. A supernatural link may help her travel back in time to recover Silverton, though neither she nor Max is sure what to do if they can reach him. Once this question is resolved, Gray (a pseudonym for bestselling historical novelist Beatriz Williams) wraps up her story of Miss Truelove and Silverton with surprising haste and little relation to their modern world or to Max, as if she'd decided to end her series quickly without addressing many of the complications she's introduced. Readers of A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (2016) may not be satisfied by the abrupt conclusion of the will-they/won't-they plot; those who skipped the series debut may not have sufficient background to invest in this sequel's fantastic doings.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.