Women accomplishing extraordinary things in the spaces men forgot to watch.
New York, 1890. Alice Thorne attends the Astor Winter Ball dressed as a reindeer. The dress code says Winter Forest. Alice Thorne interprets this literally—antlers and all. It will turn out to be the most useful decision she makes all evening.
And the least of her problems.
When a mysterious naval commander whispers that her husband has just sold secrets to the Prussians, Alice finds herself in possession of a stolen ledger, a Countess in blood-red silk, and considerably more enemies than the evening's invitation suggested.
She has spent three years being the most overlooked woman in every room. She is about to find out she was always the most dangerous one. What she has never been is unobservant—and the ledger in her corset contains the secrets of an empire, connecting the drawing rooms of Gilded Age Manhattan to something buried deep in the ironworks of Victorian Middlesbrough.
Arthur sees a thwarted handoff to be managed. Commander Sterling sees something else entirely—and refuses to underestimate her twice. Guided by an aunt whose Blackwell's Island cell is suspiciously well-appointed, Alice must decode a cipher that could expose the most dangerous secret, but for whom?
What follows is a race against a coded deadline, a conspiracy that has been hiding in plain sight for twenty years, and the slow, irreversible discovery that the marriage Alice thought she understood was designed around her rather than for her.
Some women are placed on the board without being told the rules. Alice intends to rewrite them.
The Antler Incident is the first book in The Ironopolis Files—ten interconnected standalone novels set against the gilded machinery of Gilded Age New York and the industrial secrets forged in its Middlesbrough iron foundations.
Sharp as a cipher. Propulsive as a steam engine. Built around women accomplishing extraordinary things in the spaces men forgot to watch.
For readers who binged Bridgerton and Slow Horses and wondered why no one had combined them yet.
