On the Nature of Magic

Trade Paperback

1902. Helena Walton-Cisneros, known for finding answers to the impossible, has started her own detective agency. She takes on two new uncanny cases, both located in Paris which itself is too much of a coincidence to ignore. In the first case, two English women claim to have seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles. The second case is the murder of a young woman working at the mysterious Melies Star Films studio outside Paris.

As Helena and her colleague Eliza investigate, they hear whispers of vanishings at Melies Star Films, strange lights, spies, actors flying without ropes and connections to the occult. What is George Melies practising at his secretive film studio? And is it connected to the haunting in Versailles? Helena and Eliza will only find the answers if they accept the natural world is darker, stranger than they could ever have imagined A rich, lyrical supernatural mystery, from the author of The Golden Key and The Swimmers