Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

by Karen Abbott

Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history–and the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicago’s notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club’s proprietors, two aristocratic sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons, into... (more)

Chasing the Devil's Tail: A Mystery of Storyville, New Orleans

Chasing the Devil's Tail: A Mystery of Storyville, New Orleans

by David Fulmer

Storyville, 1907: In this raucous, bloody, red-light district, where two thousand scarlet women ply their trade in grand mansions and filthy dime-a-trick cribs, where cocaine and opium are sold over the counter, and where rye whiskey flows like an amber river, there's a killer loose. Someone is murdering Storyville prostitutes and marking each killing with a black rose. As Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr begins... (more)

Forbidden Fruit

by Erica Spindler, Erica Spindler

Only one man can uncover the sins and secrets of three generations of Pierron women. . . Lily Pierron: In sultry New Orleans any sin can be had for a price. For Lily, a legendary madam, that price is her daugher, Hope. Hope Pierron St. Germaine: By day, the elegant and pious wife of a healthy hotelier, and devoted mother to Glory. By night, she succumbs to the unholy passions that threaten to destroy... (more)

Winds of the Storm (Avon Historical Romance)

Winds of the Storm (Avon Historical Romance)

by Beverly Jenkins

Archer Le Veq owes his life to the woman who rescued him from certain death at the height of the Civil War...a woman known only as "the Butterfly." Now, in the dark, waning days of Reconstruction, he needs the courageous and beautiful former spy...in more ways than before! Zahra Lafayette thinks her days of intrigue are far behind her, until she is asked to go on one more mission. Posing as an infamous madam in... (more)

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

by Gabriel García Márquez

A New York Times Notable Book On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this... (more)

Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

Sebastian St. Cyr: Book 4

Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

Fourth in the “moody and atmospheric” historical mystery series starring “a troubled but compelling antihero.”( Booklist ) London, 1812. The brutal slaughter of eight young prostitutes in a house of refuge near Covent Garden leaves only one survivor—and one witness: Hero Jarvis, reform-minded daughter of the Prince Regent’s cousin, Lord Jarvis. When the Machiavellian powerbroker quashes any official inquiry that... (more)

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover

by Victoria Janssen

Wretched be the woman of wealth and fortune who fails to produce a suitable heir…. And wretched is what Duchess Camille feels living with the cruel and debauched duke. But that soon turns to desperation when she learns her lecherous husband is plotting to have her killed to make way for a more nubile and fertile companion. Knowing she cannot sit idly by and wait for death, she flees into the night, taking with her... (more)

The Women of Nell Gwynne's

by Kage Baker

Lady Beatrice was the proper British daughter of a proper British soldier, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of early-Victorian London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne's. Nell Gwynne's is far more than simply the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; it is in fact the sister organization to... (more)

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

by Gordon Dahlquist

With translation rights sold in twenty-five countries, Gordon Dahlquist’s spectacular and extraordinary debut novel was one of the most-talked-about acquisitions of 2005. Now this monumental Victorian thriller is destined to be the publishing sensation of 2006. It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection from Miss Temple’s fiancé, written on crisp Ministry paper and delivered on her maid’s silver tray. But... (more)

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