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Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling manse of Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honour of his beloved sister, who died at the age of five, Loeall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, assiduously ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn... that she is, in fact, a boy.
Rose grows up with the two inquisitive and ebullient servant children who are her only friends; all three are educated by Rose's adoptive mother Anonyma in the musty recesses of the Octagonal Library. Rose grows up blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Hall's yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses, as befits a young lady. Until, of course, the fateful day when Rose's world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an imposter by those who would claim her place as
heir.
Set in the early years of the nineteenth century, and an England at once as believable as Sarah Waters' and as grotesque as Mervyn Peake's, Misfortune is a gothic novel for our times - a huge, rich, funny, exciting work of fiction that is destined to become a classic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born in Hastings, educated at Cambridge, Wesley Stace is also known as the musician John Wesley Harding. He is currently at work on his second novel and his fourteenth album. He lives in Brooklyn.

Misfortune

(BK-2300)