Determined to secure entry into the elite social circles of late nineteenth-century Rhode Island, a former robber baron enlists the help of a pair of social gadflies but finds his efforts complicated by his daughter's dangerous romance with an impoverished young Irishman.

Having turned down the proposal of Derrick Andrews, Emma Cross has no imminent plans for matrimony--let alone motherhood. But when she discovers an infant left on her doorstep, she naturally takes the child into her care. Using her influence as a cousin to the Vanderbilts and a society page reporter for the "Newport Observer", Emma launches a discreet search for the baby's mother. But as Emma navigates dark undercurrents of scandalous indiscretions...

Wealthy American industrialist Aubrey Nelson has invited the Duke and Duchess of Westbrook to visit his family's Newport seaside "cottage" for the summer. With his parents' departure from New York delayed, Aubrey's mother sends him ahead to oversee preparations for their guests. But when he arrives, he's surprised to find the house and staff in disarray . . . With much to do and little time, Aubrey comes to rely on the housekeeper, a lovely young...

When she stumbles upon a dead body with an arrow in it while attending a lavish Elizabethan fête in 1899, journalist Emma Vanderbilt, discovering the victim is a judge who didn't walk the straight and narrow, must score a bull's eye to stop the killer from taking another life. September, 1899. After the death of her uncle, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Emma Cross is in no mood for one of Newport's extravagant parties. But to keep Vanderbilt's reckless son...

July, 1899, Bellevue Avenue. Emma Cross, editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger, covers Newport's first-ever automobile parade. The festive atmosphere turns to shock as Philip King drunkenly swerves his motorcar into a wooden figure of a nanny pushing a pram on the obstacle course. That evening, at a dinner party hosted by Ella King, Emma and her beau Derrick Andrews are enjoying the food and the company when Ella's son staggers in, still inebriated....