The Music of the Spheres

by ElizabethRedfern (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.24

  London in the late eighteenth century. The capital is thronged with French 'emigres and France's revolutionary Armies have swept across Europe and now face the English coast. A plan to land a French monarchist army in Brittany to relieve the pressure and to persuade Britain's ally Spain to remain in the ware is under way. In this atmposphere spies and rumours of spies are rife. One circle under suspicion is a group of astronomers who are searching for a missing star they believe to obrit somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. At the centre of this ring are brother and sister Guy and Auguste Montpellier. The star has been named Selene after Guy's dead amour, executed by the revolutionaries. A periodicaly deranged opium addict, Guy's decadence leads to him paying exorbitant sums for sex with prostitutes. All the prositutes share a remarkable resemblance to the dead Selene and all of them end up dead shortly after Guy's visit. Jonathan Absey is a government intelligence officer investigating spying rings. He knows that one of the group of astronomers is smuggling secrets on the Brittany landings to Paris, using his half-brother Alexander, a fellow astronomer, who has become besotted

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.24

  London, the summer of 1795- a season of revolutionary fervour, scientific discovery and vicious murders. The British government is in disarray, unable to stem the flood of secrets to Paris; betrayals that doom her war efforts to failure. In rural Kensington a group of French emigr-s are pursuing a scientific dream, the discovery of a planet they call Selene. The group has fallen under the spell of a beautiful and amoral woman - Auguste de Montpellier who is at once their muse and dark angel. Meanwhile a killer lurks in the back streets of the capital- the victims are all prostitutes and have been paid in French Louis d'Or, the currency of France's spies. Jonathan Absey is a Home Office clerk whose official task is to smash the French spy ring. Privately however, he has become obsessed with the murders. These interests intersect when he finds himself drawn into the Montpellier circle, yet his pursuit for truth remains obscured through coded letters, opium and conspiracy. Absey must uncover the mystery before the summer dies; an invasion fleet is being prepared to set sail across the channel and the lives of those on board now rest on his discoveries.