Factory of Cunning

Set in late eighteenth-century England Philippa Stockley's American debut gives us a wickedly delightful but deadly serious battle of the wills and the sexes. It begins with the arrival in London of the mysterious Mrs. Fox--on the run from a scandalous French past--who takes a new identity determined to reinvent herself. She must pit her formidable skills for revenge against Earl Much a British aristocrat with no less notorious a past and easily her match in sinfulness and intrigue. Between these two swirls a story featuring venal lords wronged maidens and reprobate clergymen transporting readers from bawdy houses to country estates--places where the pleasures of the flesh are both high comedy and serious business. <p/><em>A Factory of Cunning</em> takes readers to the world immortal­ized in <em>Dangerous Liaisons.</em> And like Michel Faber's <em>The Crimson Petal and the White </em> the vividly rendered setting and characters give the thrill of a fresh discovery.<br>