Book description
Winter, 1661. In her short life Sadie Appleby has never left rural
Westmorland. But one night she is rudely awoken by her older and bolder
sister, Ella. She has robbed her employer and is on the run. Together
the girls flee their home and head for London, hoping to lose themselves
in the teeming city. But the dead man's relatives are in pursuit, and
soon a game of cat and mouse ensues amongst the freezing warren that is
London in winter. Ella is soon seduced by the glitter and glamour of
city life and sets her sights on the flamboyant man-about-town, Jay
Whitgift, owner of a beauty parlour for the wives of the London gentry.
But nothing in the capital is what it seems, least of all Jay Whitgift.
Soon a rift has formed between Ella and Sadie, and the sisters are
threatened by a menace more sinister than even the law. Set in a
brilliantly realised Restoration London, The Gilded Lily is a novel
about beauty and desire, about the stories we tell ourselves, and about
how sisterhood can be both a burden and a saving grace.
