Across an unnamed city, an heiress, a killer, and a spy forge an unlikely alliance against a vicious conspiracy in a scrupulously realized Victorian world.

Seething with danger, terror, eroticism and romance, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is an exuberant return to the classic -- and classically lurid -- Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century, where murders, seductions, airships, secret societies, alchemical science, and insidious rituals all play a part in this epic adventure.

Miss Celeste Temple has sailed from her plantation home in the West Indies to find a husband, but when her fiancee of three months breaks their engagement without explanation, she is determined to discover why.

Cardinal Chang, a mercenary for hire, is engaged to murder a military officer newly posted to the Palace, only to find someone else has done the job before him, leaving Chang to take the blame.

Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson, specially attached to the diplomatic party of the irresponsible Crown Prince of Macklenburg to guard against scandal, finds his charge first implicated in sinister debaucheries and then vanished altogether.

Together the three join forces against a ruthless cabal wielding mind-control, blackmail, temptation, and a mysterious blue glass that holds the power to entrap memory itself, however luscious or terrible.