In the winter of 1862, London veterinarian John Crawford learns that his interlude with a prostitute seven years earlier has produced a daughter. The now-reformed ex-prostitute, Adelaide McKee, has recently learned that their lost daughter is still alive—but that the girl's life and soul are in peril from a vampiric ghost whose murderous attention McKee drew in her bad old days.

The vampire ghost is John Polidori, Lord Byron's one-time physician and uncle to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, both of whose works are supernaturally aided by the influence of Polidori. But when Polidori horribly makes a resurrected vampire of Dante's wife, and threatens other family members, the Rossettis know that they must find a way to destroy their monstrous uncle, even though it means the end of their best work.

Thrown together with Crawford and McKee, who hope to find and save their fugitive daughter, the Rossettis find themselves plunged into a supernatural London underworld they never suspected. Each of the mismatched four, and the Artful-Dodger-like daughter too—in the midst of shootings and narrow escapes and supernatural warfare — must ultimately choose between stressful life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers.

The novel sweeps from high London society to the grimmest slums, from the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman catacombs under St. Paul's cathedral, and ultimately reveals a supernatural revenge plot against England that has been brewing since the queen of the native Iceni was killed by the Roman governor Suetonius in 60 AD.

"Tim Powers and Charnel House are putting together a very special edition celebrating Charnel House's Twentieth Anniversary in 2008. We will be revisiting our old friends Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley for the occasion."

Powers add the following nugget of information to further wet our appetites...

"I've agreed to do a novella for Joe Stefko, to involve Shelley and probably Byron, and I'm to have it done by the end of the year. There's no title yet, and I don't have any idea what it'll be about -- probably it'll be in the same world as Stress of Her R, like a 'missing chapter.'"

More news on this as soon as I have it.

"... I'll be very curious to hear what you think of it -- I've got to re-read it myself, taking notes, since it'll be a bit relevant to the book I'm working on. Don't tell anybody, but this new one looks like being a sort of remote sequel to Stress of Her Regard -- same universe, anyway. Of course it may turn out not to be!"

Either way, it's a tantalising prospect for Powers fans!