Paris, 1750. And in the midst of an icy winter, as birds fall frozen from the sky, chambermaid Madeleine Chastel arrives at the home of the city’s celebrated clockmaker and his clever, unworldly daughter.
Madeleine is hiding a dark past, and a dangerous purpose: to discover the truth of the clockmaker’s experiments and record his every move, in exchange for her own chance of freedom.
For as children quietly vanish from the Parisian streets, rumours are swirling that the clockmaker’s intricate mechanical creations, bejewelled birds and silver spiders, are more than they seem.
And soon Madeleine fears that she has stumbled upon an even greater conspiracy. One which might reach to the very heart of Versailles
The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola is published on 3 March, 2020.
We’ll have a review of Anna’s book here in Historia very soon.
Read Anna’s Desert Island Books choices.
Anna has compiled a spine-shivering collection of spooky reads in Gothic writers choose their favourite chilling books. And in Read All About It! she lists her top five novels based on real crimes and asks: why are we so fascinated?
