Newport, RI September 1896 “You will come down from there this instant. Now, sir.” I clapped my hands for emphasis, but to no avail. The individual whose disorderly bulk presently concealed the newest tear in the leather seat of my buggy merely tilted his head at me with an infuriating mixture of defiance and incomprehension. That look begged the question: How could I possibly object to his accompanying me? Yes, well. Such had been my morning thus far. The same individual had

Newport, RI, June 29, 1896 I sat up in bed, my heart thumping in my throat, my ears pricked. I’d woken to high-pitched keening, an eerie, unearthly sound that gathered force in the very pit of my stomach. There had been no warning in last night’s starry skies and temperate breezes, but sometime in the ensuing hours a storm must have closed in around tiny Aquidneck Island. I knew I should hurry about the house and secure the storm shutters, yet as I continued to listen, I hear

CHAPTER ONE Newport, RI, August 1895 She awoke that morning to an angry sea battering the edges of the promontory, and gusting winds that kicked up a spray to rattle against her bedroom windows. She might simply have rolled over, closed her eyes again and sunk pleasantly back into sleep, if not for the— Here the nib of my pen ran dry and scratched across the paper, threatening to leave a tear. If not for the what? I knew what I wanted to say; this was to be a novel of mystery