Katherine McMahon is the author of four previous novels. She has taught in secondary schools, performed in local theatre and worked as a Royal Literary Fund fellow teaching writing skills at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Warwick. She lives in Hertfordshire.

Emilie Selden is raised in seclusion by her father, who aims to turn her into a brilliant alchemist and natural philosopher. but her upbringing gives her little insight into the mysteries of the human heart.

During the sultry summer of 1725, their most daring experiment yet - an attempt to breathe new life into dead matter - is disrupted by the arrival of two fascinating strangers, and Emilie, caught up in the passion of first love, makes a fateful choice.

Her father's spell broken, she is banished to London. There, marooned by circumstance as well as by her extraordinary education, she discovers she has much to learn - about the darker recesses of human nature, and her own family's complicated past.

So begins her shocking journey to enlightenment...