The dazzling Gin Kelly returns in the third novel of the acclaimed Wicked City Prohibition series
| Just before Thanksgiving last year, I dropped a little bombshell on my editor’s desk—I’d spent the past few months writing the third book in my award-winning Wicked City series, and it was a doozy. When she recovered from the shock, she promised she’d have it ready for readers by the following autumn…and she kept her promise. I’m thrilled to present THE WICKED WIDOW, out in bookstores today. Our audacious Appalachian flapper Gin Kelly returns, this time ready to trade her high-flying ways for respectable marriage to her steadfast Prohibition agent lover, Oliver Anson Marshall. But the murder of Anson’s nemesis—head of the most notorious rum-running racket on the East Coast—turns all their plans upside down, and sends Anson back undercover in his most dangerous operation yet. Meanwhile, in 1998 Manhattan, Ella Dommerich (with the help of troublemaking Aunt Julie) digs deeper into the shady dealings at her former employer, and ends up uncovering a shocking conspiracy involving one of America’s most prominent families…all with a sinister connection to the redheaded flapper who used to live in Ella’s Greenwich Village apartment. Writing this book was sheer delight for me, a catharsis after all the turmoil of the previous months. Like you, I was trying to process everything that just happened—the upheaval of our way of life, the daily shocks of news, the practical and emotional challenges of caring for four kids in the middle of a pandemic. On the other hand, I was also processing at a deeper level everything I’d learned from the extensive historical research my novels require—the messiness of human nature, our greatnesses and weaknesses, the compromise necessary in human relationships. So THE WICKED WIDOW is one intense read. You’ll have moments when you’re gasping, moments when you want to put the book down. But if you love this series and these characters as much as I do, you might just want to start this novel all over again when you’re done. |