Claire's Last Secret

July 9, 2018
This ambitious first of a trilogy from Ambrose (Engaging) centers on the real-life Claire Clairemont, Mary Shelley’s passionate, rebellious stepsister. The action jumps between the summer of 1816, when the teenage Claire recklessly pursues a love affair with the married Lord Byron in Geneva, Switzerland, and 1873, when the now elderly Claire is living in Florence, Italy, with relatives. Nearly destitute, she struggles with whether to sell her intensely personal letters from her youth to a biographer. Billed as a mystery, this is more a historical novel laced with suspense, though a friend of the older Claire, a priest trying to help her, does meet a grisly end. It poses a question about the greatest tragedy of Claire’s past, but is most effective as a study of a young woman who takes a huge risk with her body and soul, and spends the rest of her life dealing with the consequences. Ambrose provides a fresh perspective on Byron and his literary circle. Agent: Nicole Resciniti, Seymour Agency.

July 1, 2018
Lord Byron's elderly former paramour relives a horrifying mystery from her haunted past.The year 1873 finds Claire Clairmont living in poverty in Florence with her niece, Paula, waiting only for death. She's decades removed from her torrid affair with Lord Byron and the idyllic times she spent with her stepsister, Mary Shelley, and Mary's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron's closest friend. Claire is the only survivor of this quartet. The arrival of scholar and art lover William Rossetti offers her a potential lifeline. Rossetti hopes to write a biography of Byron that includes his letters to Claire. On the day of his visit, Claire receives a letter calling into question the circumstances of her young daughter Allegra's death. Could Mary have been concealing something when she told Claire that Allegra died of typhus at her convent school? Claire's memories, going back as far as Switzerland in 1816, alternate with her current interactions with Rossetti. The visitors to Switzerland tell ghost stories to entertain themselves on a stormy night and trade opinions about current literature. And Claire, who's kept her pregnancy a carefully guarded secret, resolves to tell Byron about the child. In Florence, Claire's spells of sleeping and periods of incoherence grow longer. At length, she agrees to sell her letters to Rossetti, who's revealed as the duplicitous figure Claire first thought he might be.Ambrose, author of the Mango Bay mysteries (Coastal Corpse, 2016, etc.), writes in a florid style that suggests romantic thrillers of bygone days. The cliffhanger ending, apparently promising further Claire Clairmont thrillers, may frustrate readers familiar with the historical record or earlier fictionalizations of the heroine's life.

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August 1, 2018

Ambrose's (Coastal Corpse) background as a Romantics scholar provides the basis for this first book in a proposed trilogy about Lord George Gordon Byron and his inner circle. At 75, Claire Clairmont is the last survivor of the Byron/Shelley "haunted summer" of 1816. The stepsister of Mary Shelley, Claire was Byron's lover and mother to their daughter, Allegra. When a British visitor wants to buy her letters from Shelley and Byron, Claire looks back to that stormy summer. Years later, she still wonders if someone had wanted to kill her. Now living in Florence, Italy, with her niece Paula, Claire fears her secrets may have led to the murder of her priest confidant. Yet the mystery of what actually happened to Allegra, who supposedly died from a typhoid epidemic while attending a convent school as a child, continues to haunt her. VERDICT While the historical figures are all tragic characters, the leisurely paced story, with its overly descriptive language and grand emotions, will mostly appeal to those interested in the Romantics. There's little to attract mystery readers in this plodding tale.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2018
In some novels, the settings have the presence of characters. Such is the case in Ambrose's start to her Lord Byron mystery series. This tale spans decades and takes place in various European cities during the era of the Romantic poets. Her cast includes Lord Byron, of course, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein, published a century ago, in 1818), and her half-sister (their mother was the radical philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft) Claire, the narrator. In 1873, Claire is the impoverished last survivor of the four's passionate, now-legendary 1816 summer, haunted by memories of all that passed between them and her ill-fated love child. Now tourist William Rossetti wishes to purchase her correspondence (including a cherished poem) with Byron. Could this be the end of financial hardship? Or is something else afoot? Ambrose seduces readers with writing as smooth as a lady's silk gown and a plot as suspenseful as the appearance of an unexpected visitor, drawing readers into a realm of creative brilliance, tragedy, and secrets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)