Book description
When you read these words, and all those that follow, I am afraid
it must be because I am no longer here to speak them to you.
Love is a disease; no doubt of it, and one which has proved mortal
to many men down the ages . . .
Oxford, 1887: Even as Victoria celebrates the fiftieth year of her
reign, a stone's throw from the calm cloisters and college spires lies
Jericho, a maze of seedy streets and ill-lit taverns, haunted by
drunkards, thieves and the lowest sort of brazen female as ever lifted
her petticoats.
When Stephen Chapman, a brilliant young medical student, is
persuaded to volunteer at a shelter devoted to reforming the fallen
women of Oxford, his closest friend Edward feels a strange sense of
dread. But even Edward - who already knows the devastating effect of
falling in love with the wrong woman - cannot foresee the macabre and
violent events that will unfold around them, or stop Diana, the woman
who seems destined to drive them apart.
Katy Darby studied English Literature at Somerville College, Oxford,
and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she
received the David Higham Award. Her fiction has been read on BBC Radio,
and she has published stories in magazines including
Slice, Mslexia
and
The London Magazine,
as well as winning prizes in several international fiction
competitions. She teaches writing at City University, edits the short
story magazine
Litro
(www. litro. co. uk) and co-runs the monthly live fiction event Liars'
League (www. liarsleague. com). She lives in London.
