"Though Monk is witness to the terrible bombing of an afternoon pleasure boat on the river that leaves 200 people dead, much to his dismay the case is taken from his hands and given over to the commissioner of police. An Egyptian man is quickly caught, tried, and sentenced to death--and then just as swiftly murdered in prison. When evidence surfaces that proves the dead man innocent, the case is handed back to Monk, who must now rely on his own memory...

A young orphan, Pip, receives a fortune from a mysterious benefactor and travels to London in order to become a gentleman.

In 1890s Boston, a 15-year-old upper-class girl is banished to a convent following an affair with a married doctor which left her pregnant. The girl is forced to surrender the child for adoption, but she subsequently goes to court to recuperate it, and eventually marries the doctor. A study in the mores and manners of the day.

A married woman, pregnant with her sea-captain lover's child, dies giving birth. The child, Serafina Finn, is abandoned to an orphanage and grows up longing to feel that she belongs somewhere. Eighteen years later, her father, hearing rumours that his lost daughter survived, dispatches a detective, Adam Chapman, to discover the truth. Adam finds, and falls in love with, Serafina--but, even if he can prove her identity, will her real family accept...

In an alternate history of the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria has married Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula, leading to a reign of horror, while, in Whitechapel, Silver Knife, a murderer of vampire girls, threatens the new regime.