The Vesalius Club
"A rip-roaring page-turner of a novel about the 18th-century 'resurrection' trade, Basham's insight and prose cut to the heart of the matter."--Andrew Klavan, New York Times best-selling author, and two-time winner of the Edgar Award
The Anatomy of Murder
In the dead of night, a young woman in a cloak joins a pack of students streaming into a Stratford churchyard. Their prize is no ordinary relic, but the skull of William Shakespeare--and Miriam Dalrymple has the steadiest hands of them all. She has no business among grave robbers, but London has already changed her.
Only weeks earlier, Miri seized the chance to leave her father's Yorkshire estate for the stench and spectacle of George III and Queen Charlotte's 1761 London, to live with her sister Anna and work as an illustrator to Anna's husband, celebrated physician, Dr. William Temple.
In Temple's private anatomy school, knowledge is purchased with blood, secrecy, and stolen cadavers that arrive by lantern light. Miri's gift for drawing the dead quickly makes her indispensable to Temple, and her exceptional talent for dissection propels her into the elite circles of the Royal Society. But it's the enigmatic Vesalius Club, a band of radical young anatomists led by the charismatic American, Davis Gardiner, that truly captivates her.
Pledging allegiance to the revolutionary spirit of Andreas Vesalius, Miri discovers a world of coffeehouse debates and midnight "resurrections" in paupers' graveyards. She loves to watch the clean precision of the scalpel as it opens new worlds to explore with her art, the challenge of turning spent flesh into discoveries that might change the course of medicine. Most of all, Miri is determined to be the first medical illustrator to precisely depict the stages of human gestation in expectant women.
As if in answer to this ambition, a new sort of body begins to arrive on William Temple's tables: young women, poor and pregnant, whose names are in Harris' notorious "list" of London prostitutes. At the same time, whispers of murder-for-science ripple through the alleys of Seven Dials, and a lady's maid from Anna's household disappears. Soon, Miri is forced to face a terrible question: has someone in her own circle committed serial murders, or worse, in the name of science?
As suspicion coils around the Vesalius Club, Miri's tidy faith in reason is shaken. To protect her sister and the man she's coming to love, she must follow the trail of bodies through London's theaters, brothels, and anatomy halls and find the culprit before she herself is reduced to a specimen.
The Alienist meets The Essex Serpent in this Georgian thriller full of action, mystery, and suspense by award-winning investigative reporter and New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author, Megan Basham.
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