The Unsealing: Love, Lust, and Murder in the Gilded Age

Named BookLife Editor's Pick - '... Written with grace and power, capturing the moment that electricity lit up the world ...'

 'An addictive page-turner with rich historical details ...' - Kirkus Reviews

A gripping, lush, immersive historical mystery inspired by a 'true crime of the century' that shocked the world, set against the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. This is the first novel - the origin story - in the Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries from award-winning author Robert Brighton - as much a 'whydunit' as a 'whodunit' in a page-turning story culminating in a murder that leaves readers wanting more.

Buffalo, New York, 1901 … a muscular, young city, Queen of the Lakes … The Electric City … where the money that builds Newport mansions and Park Avenue townhouses is made, plays host to the world’s greatest fair, the Pan-American Exposition and its 8,000,000 guests …

And less than a mile from the great spectacle, a web of love, lust, and intrigue is forming among the young, elite Ashwood Set. Alicia and Edward Miller may be one of Ashwood’s most envied couples, but as their marriage curdles, simmering and sultry Alicia falls for dashing, young attorney Arthur Pendle, on whose mysterious income he and his longsuffering wife – facing demons of their own – live fast and high …

But life is never fast enough, or high enough, for the Ashwood Set, who plunge headlong into a deadly whirlpool of official corruption, financial deceit, and infidelity which can only end in disaster … while the fate of beautiful, aspiring sleuth Sarah Payne and her Avenging Angel Detective Agency hang precariously in the balance.

Pitting detective against detective, husband against wife, and set against the backdrop of Gilded Age splendor and excess, The Unsealing is a gripping, psychological tale of forbidden pleasures and fathomless pain.