The Tailor's Daughter

From the New York Times bestselling author of Firebird comes a richly detailed historical drama full of good Gothic romance suspense and smartly dressed people.As the daughter of a prosperous tailor in 1860’s London Veda Grenfell has grown up accustomed to elegance and style. When a fever leaves her deaf at the age of sixteen she turns for solace to the familiar world of her father’s workshop. Veda has inherited her father’s extraordinary talent and she is not content to hide demurely in the back room whipping stitches. Defying Victorian notions of propriety she establishes herself as a tailor to the young fashionable sporting set of English nobility. Yet beneath her impeccable dress and irreproachable manners beats a heart longing for the love of a man and a family of her own.When an ambitious Italian tailor extends an offer of marriage Veda’s keen intuition leads her to reject him with disastrous consequences. Her situation is even more complicated by her growing attachment to Harry Breadalbane a young viscount with a fascination for all things modern and a restless need to exert his energy on more than horse-racing and women.As their complicity deepens unsettling rumors begin to circulate about Harry’s family and his brutally powerful father the reclusive Earl of Hambledon. When passion turns to betrayal Veda abandons her beloved Savile Row and sets off on a treacherous journey to reclaim her rights – a journey that will bring her face to face with the darkly destructive forces that lurk at the depths of the human heart.Graham’s elegant prose paints a deeply human portrait of a girl both willful and confused vulnerable and yet fiercely courageous. The young narrator’s chronicle of her determination to seize for herself those dreams others try to deny her render her character unforgettable and illuminate a world rarely imagined in literature.