If you have ever found yourself wondering what is the best knife to hide in a corset or the most effective poison to administer to a traveling dignitary during a seven course meal, then Reader Friends, do I have the book for you. While The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is a fabulous romp full of humor and adventure, it also serves as a guide for those wondering how to be the most civilized and proper murderer and thief. For example, a pirate should always make sure to leave the house equipped with a hat, parasol and gloves to ensure that they do not succumb to The Great Peril. The Great Peril of freckles, that is.
It just isn’t done.
When a washed up bottle leads to the discovery of a spell that can move objects, no matter the size or weight, a former book club became the grand Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. The Wisteria Society takes their pirating extremely seriously and takes great pains to raise their daughters as proper Lady Pirates. One such young lady, Cecilia Bassingthwaite has been eagerly, but not too eagerly, awaiting her formal induction to the Society. Having learned how to kill with a teaspoon, steer a flying house and always pour the tea before the milk, she is ready to join the ranks of this illustrious society. However, someone is trying to assassinate her, and not in any type of clever way, and between fending off attempts of murder and locating a new novel, there just hasn’t been the time.
When the members of the Society are kidnapped, Cecilia must use her wits and the help of an unlikely ally, whose identity seems to change more often than his waistcoat, to save her aunt and the other Society members.
I have never been more thrilled to find out a book is the first in a series. The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. It’s incredibly funny and thoroughly enjoys mocking it’s own genre, while at the same time, is a love letter to historical romance. It is a wonderfully madcap steampunk adventure filled with magical elements that shows not only the strength of women, but the power they hold when they come together.
Thoroughly entertaining, The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is the fantastical romance of the summer.
Don’t believe me? You should. I would never lie to you. The lovely folks at Berkley have sent an excerpt to share with you and I can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts.
Enjoy!
THE WISTERIA SOCIETY OF LADY SCOUNDRELS by India Holton
Berkley Trade Paperback Original | On Sale: June 15th, 2021
Excerpt
There was no possibility of walking to the library that day. Morning rain had blanched the air, and Miss Darlington feared that if Cecilia ventured out she would develop a cough and be dead within the week. Therefore Cecilia was at home, sitting with her aunt in a room ten degrees colder than the streets of London, and reading aloud The Song of Hiawatha by “that American rogue, Mr. Longfellow,” when the strange gentleman knocked at their door.
As the sound barged through the house, interrupting Cecilia’s recitation mid-¬rhyme, she looked inquiringly at her aunt. But Miss Darlington’s own gaze went to the mantel clock, which was ticking sedately ¬toward a quarter to one. The old lady frowned.
“It is an abomination the way people these days knock at any wild, unseemly hour,” she said in much the same tone the prime minister had used in Parliament recently to decry the London rioters. “I do declare—¬!”
Cecilia waited, but Miss Darlington’s only declaration came in the form of sipping her tea pointedly, by which Cecilia understood that the abominable caller was to be ignored. She returned to Hiawatha and had just begun proceeding “¬toward the land of the Pearl-¬Feather” when the knocking came again with increased force, silencing her and causing Miss Darlington to set her teacup into its saucer with a clink. Tea splashed, and Cecilia hastily laid down the poetry book before things ¬¬really got out of hand.
“I shall see who it is,” she said, smoothing her dress as she rose and touching the red-¬gold hair at her temples, although there was no crease in the muslin nor a single strand out of place in her coiffure.
“Do be careful, dear,” Miss Darlington admonished. “Anyone attempting to visit at this time of day is obviously some kind of hooligan.”
“Fear not, Aunty.” Cecilia took up a bone-¬handled letter opener from the small table beside her chair. “They will not trouble me.”
Miss Darlington harrumphed. “We are buying no subscriptions today,” she called out as Cecilia left the room.
In fact they had never bought subscriptions, so this was an unnecessary injunction, although typical of Miss Darlington, who persisted in seeing her ward as the reckless tomboy who had entered her care ten years before: prone to climbing trees, fashioning cloaks from tablecloths, and making unauthorized doorstep purchases whenever the fancy took her. But a decade’s proper education had wrought wonders, and now Cecilia walked the hall quite calmly, her French heels tapping against the polished marble floor, her intentions aimed in no way ¬toward the taking of a subscription. She opened the door.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Good afternoon,” said the man on the step. “May I interest you in a brochure on the plight of the endangered North Atlantic auk?”
Cecilia blinked from his pleasant smile to the brochure he was holding out in a black-¬gloved hand. She noticed at once the scandalous lack of hat upon his blond hair and the embroidery trimming his black frock coat. He wore neither sideburns nor mustache, his boots were tall and buckled, and a silver hoop hung from one ear. She looked again at his smile, which quirked in response.
“No,” she said, and closed the door.
And bolted it.
Ned remained for a moment longer with the brochure extended as his brain waited for his body to catch up with events. He considered what he had seen of the woman who had stood so briefly in the shadows of the doorway, but he could not recall the exact color of the sash that waisted her soft white dress, nor whether it had been pearls or stars in her hair, nor even how deeply winter dreamed in her lovely eyes. He held only a general impression of “beauty so rare and face so fair”—¬and implacability so terrifying in such a young woman.
And then his body made pace, and he grinned.
Miss Darlington was pouring herself another cup of tea when Cecilia returned to the parlor. “Who was it?” she asked without looking up.
“A pirate, I believe,” Cecilia said as she sat and, taking the little book of poetry, began sliding a finger down a page to relocate the line at which she’d been interrupted.
Miss Darlington set the teapot down. With a delicate pair of tongs fashioned like a sea monster, she began loading sugar cubes into her cup. “What made you think that?”
Cecilia was quiet a moment as she recollected the man. He had been handsome in a rather dangerous way, despite the ridiculous coat. A light in his eyes had suggested he’d known his brochure would not fool her, but he’d entertained himself with the pose anyway. She predicted his hair would fall over his brow if a breeze went through it, and that the slight bulge in his trousers had been in case she was not happy to see him—¬a dagger, or perhaps a gun.
“Well?” her aunt prompted, and Cecilia blinked herself back into focus.
“He had a tattoo of an anchor on his wrist,” she said. “Part of it was visible from beneath his sleeve. But he did not offer me a secret handshake, nor invite himself in for tea, as anyone of decent piratic society would have done, so I took him for a rogue and shut him out.”
“A rogue pirate! At our door!” Miss Darlington made a small, disapproving noise behind pursed lips. “How reprehensible. Think of the germs he might have had. I wonder what he was after.”
Cecilia shrugged. Had Hiawatha confronted the magician yet? She could not remember. Her finger, three-¬quarters of the way down the page, moved up again. “The Scope diamond, perhaps,” she said. “Or Lady Askew’s necklace.”
Miss Darlington clanked a teaspoon around her cup in a manner that made Cecilia wince. “Imagine if you had been out as you planned, Cecilia dear. What would I have done, had he broken in?”
“Shot him?” Cecilia suggested.
Miss Dar¬ling¬ton arched two vehemently plucked eyebrows ¬toward the ringlets on her brow. “Good heavens, child, what do you take me for, a maniac? Think of the damage a ricocheting bullet would do in this room.”
“Stabbed him, then?”
“And get blood all over the rug? It’s a sixteenth-¬century Persian antique, you know, part of the royal collection. It took a great deal of effort to acquire.”
“Steal,” Cecilia murmured.
“Obtain by private means.”
“Well,” Cecilia said, abandoning a losing battle in favor of the original topic of conversation. “It was indeed fortunate I was here. ‘The level moon stared at him—¬’ ”
“The moon? Is it up already?” Miss Darlington glared at the wall as if she might see through its swarm of framed pictures, its wallpaper and wood, to the celestial orb beyond, and therefore convey her disgust at its diurnal shenanigans.
“No, it stared at Hiawatha,” Cecilia explained. “In the poem.”
“Oh. Carry on, then.”
“ ‘In his face stared pale and haggard—¬’ ”
“Repetitive fellow, isn’t he?”
“Poets do tend to—¬”
Miss Darlington waved a hand irritably. “I don’t mean the poet, girl. The pirate. Look, he’s now trying to climb in the window.”
