In the Tenth House
A Novel
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
London, 1896: Dr. Ambrose Gennett can’t shake the fear that gripped him when he heard her voice. On the train platform in Kensington, he went to the aid of a woman hurt in an accident. He didn’t know her, but she knew him–she saw things he had never revealed to anyone. She spoke prophecy and then disappeared into the crowd.Gennett is a “mad doctor,” one of the few physicians in London aware of the new Freudian theories of the mind. His confidence shaken by the encounter, Gennett vows to find this young woman again, partly to help her and largely to prove to himself that she is not as supernatural as she seems. She has to be either mistaken or mad.The truth is much worse.Lily Embly is a fake medium but a real psychic–or at least she believes she is. Struggling to free herself from a lifetime of poverty and schooled as a charlatan by her mother, Lily works the strings and magnets of trickery at séances that have become wildly popular in Victorian England. Her false spirit messages are guided by the tarot cards and horoscopes she consults in secret. But when her mother falls ill, debt threatens to destroy them both.Desperate, Lily has teamed up with a dangerous con man, Monsieur St. Aubin, to pull off a risky–and potentially very lucrative–séance. And when Gennett discovers that his own sister has fallen under the sway of the spiritual frenzy that has gripped the city, his sanity depends on exposing Lily as a fraud.Only one can be right, and only one will survive.Richly atmospheric, In the Tenth House conjures up a world of obsession and passion; it transports readers to an era that saw science and faith collide. Full of wit, insight, and fascinating historical detail, it is an astonishing debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dietz weaves a colorful debut set in Victorian London when psychology was considered experimental, spiritualism was a hobby of the gentle class and neither field was understood or accepted. Budding psychoanalyst Dr. Ambrose Gennett becomes obsessed with beautiful spiritualist Lily Embly when she flees from their chance encounter at a train station. After locating Lily, who is trying to pay down her debt to nefarious lenders with meager earnings from her tarot reading business and by helping her mother perform s ances, Gennett learns of her profession and becomes bent on saving her. Lily, meanwhile, is convinced Gennett was sent to help her out of her financial jam and invites his sister and aunt to participate in a s ance. Outraged that Lily has co-opted his family, Gennett turns vengeful, and his professional life suffers as his quest to out her as a fraud heats up, and Lily teams up with the scheming Monsieur St. Aubin, who provides Lily with access to a very moneyed crowd. The confrontation erupts at a grand s ance and has drastic repercussions neither Lily nor Gennett expect. Dietz handles her characters and plot with a precision uncommon to debut novelists.