1876. Nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at a great country house of Evenwood to be interviewed for the position of lady's-maid. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de lOrme, to uncover the dark and dangerous secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal, and to set right a past injustice in which Esperanzas own closest interests are bound up. Gradually those secrets are revealed, and with them the truth of who Esperanza really is, enmeshing her in a complicated web of intrigue, deceit, and murder that culminates in betrayal by those she trusted most. A sequel to the widely praised The Meaning of Night, The Glass of Time is both a page-turning period mystery and a gripping study of identity, the nature of secrets, and what can happen when past obsessions impose themselves on an unwilling present.

Author Biography

Michael Cox was born in 1948. After graduating from Cambridge, he was a singer-songwriter before joining Oxford University Press. His first novel, The Meaning of Night", published in 2006 to wide critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and nominated for Waterstones Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards. He lives in rural Northamptonshire with his wife Dizzy.