What The Ladys Maid Knew

London is a powder keg... and Eliza Braxton is the match. Imagine a London where magic is real... real, but feared. This is Eliza Braxton's London, and she has always accepted her place in it gladly. As one of the Riftborn, her magic has relegated her to the servant class, where she dutifully serves as the lady's maid in one of the most powerful households in the country. There, she uses her remarkable powers of persuasion to keep Elder Hallewell's rebellious daughter in the path to an arranged match of power and prosperity. Eliza has never questioned her loyalty... until now. Currents of discontent are roiling beneath the city's surface, and Eliza's comfortable existence is about to be caught up in the tide. A resistance is building, a resistance that covets Eliza's talents above all else. But can Eliza betray everything she's ever known for things she never dared to dream? What the Lady's Maid Knew is the first thrilling installment in E.E. Holmes' new series The Riftmagic Saga.

Fiercely dependent on her identity as a lady’s maid, a woman relates her experiences and ambitions, and the paths that her vocation has taken her down in this dramatic monologue. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

“Fascinating . . . The reader is treated to a revealing account of the passionate romance between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning through the eyes of an intimate observer.”—Booklist Young and timid but full of sturdy good sense and awakening sophistication, Lily Wilson arrives in London in 1844, becoming a lady’s maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett. Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’ s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years. It is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and flees with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light, and colors of Italy. As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion, and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis–birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given. Praise for Lady's Maid “[A] wonderful novel . . . fully imagined and persuasive fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review “Absorbing . . . heartbreaking . . . grips the reader's imagination on every page . . . [Margaret] Forster paints a vivid picture of class, station, hypocrisy and survival in Victorian society.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Extremely readable . . . The author's sense of the nineteenth century seems innate.”—The New Yorker “Highly recommended . . . an engrossing novel of the colorful Browning ménage.”—Library Journal “Delightful . . . entertaining.”—Vogue

IT was the autumn after I had the typhoid. I'd been three months in hospital, and when I came out I looked so weak and tottery that the two or three ladies I applied to were afraid to engage me. Most of my money was gone, and after I'd boarded for two months, hanging about the employment-agencies, and answering any advertisement that looked any way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting hadn't made me fatter, and I didn't see why my luck should ever turn. It did though—or I thought so at the time. A Mrs. Railton, a friend of the lady that first brought me out to the States, met me one day and stopped to speak to me: she was one that had always a friendly way with her. She asked me what ailed me to look so white, and when I told her, "Why, Hartley," says she, "I believe I've got the very place for you. Come in to-morrow and we'll talk about it."

Ashes, ashes, they'll all fall down... The death of a Resistance leader has thrown Post-Rift London into upheaval, and Eliza Braxton, a Riftborn lady's maid with exceptional magic, has promised her help to the rebel cause. But she quickly realizes that her role as a spy in the powerful Hallewell household will place her- and perhaps even those she loves- in near-constant peril. Resistance leader Eli Turner has concocted a new scheme which, if successful, will expose to the world the Illustratum's source of control over the Riftborn population, and Eliza agrees to play a crucial role in the plot. But as she dives into the dark and dangerous underbelly of Riftborn London, Eliza will discover truths she never imagined about her own life, and face decisions that will chart the course, not only of her own future, but of the whole Riftborn world. The spark has caught at last, and all that remains for Eliza, Eli, and their companions is to hope they can keep the inferno from consuming them all. The Rebel Beneath the Stairs is the second installment in E.E. Holmes' thrilling series "The Riftmagic Saga."

“Agatha Christie meets Downton Abbey…exemplary.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY To make ends meet, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, have decided to open up Foxwood Hall to guided public tours. Not everyone is pleased about it—even to the point of committing murder . . . The lean times following the Great War continue to require creative solutions for England's noble class. But Lady Phoebe’s proposal to open up the Renshaw estate to guided tours for additional income strikes many in the family as a “vulgar enterprise.” Phoebe’s grandfather, the Earl of Wroxly, however, reluctantly concedes the necessity. Their first tour group consists of members of the Historical Society, a magazine writer, and a flock of students. It’s a large group for Phoebe, her sister Amelia, and Eva to manage, and when the widow Arvina Bell goes missing, Eva goes in search of her—only to find her in the library, strangled with a silken drapery cord. The schoolchildren are promptly sent home, but the members of the Historical Society—many of whom also wandered off at times—remain for interrogation. There is also, curiously, a framed photo missing from the library. As the police hastily zero in on a suspect, Phoebe and Eva weigh the clues. Does the crime have to do with rumors of hidden treasure at Foxwood Hall? But they must make haste to solve the widow’s murder—before someone else becomes history . . .

A raucous wedding reception turns sober when the wealthy groom is murdered in this historical mystery set in post-WWI England. Since the Great War, the Renshaw family fortune has suffered, and Lady Julia Renshaw is under pressure to marry for money. She has settled on Gilbert Townsend, a much older viscount and wealthy industrialist. It’s clear to her sister Phoebe that this is not a love match. Nevertheless, the wedding takes place—and in a hurry. At the reception aboard the groom’s yacht, there appears to be tension between Gil and several guests: his best man, a fellow veteran of the Boer War; his grouchy spinster sister; and his current heir, a nervous young cousin named Ernest. The bride is also less than pleased when she discovers that Gil’s attractive young secretary will be escorting them on their honeymoon. The next morning, before the yacht can depart the harbor, Gil’s body is found in the water below—and Julia is the prime suspect. Now Phoebe and her maid Eva must discover who pushed him over before the Renshaws’ social standing is irreparably stained by murder.

“Downton Abbey fans will enjoy Maxwell’s evocative descriptions” of British post-WWI society in the first Lady and Lady’s Maid Mystery (Library Journal). December 1918: As a difficult year draws to a close, there is much to celebrate for nineteen-year-old Phoebe Renshaw and her three siblings at their beloved family estate of Foxwood Hall. The dreadful war is finally over; eldest daughter Julia’s engagement to their houseguest, the Marquis of Allerton, appears imminent; and all have gathered to enjoy peace on earth, good will toward men. But the peace of Foxwood Hall is shattered on the morning of Boxing Day, when the Marquis goes missing. Not entirely missing, however, as macabre evidence of foul play turns up in gift boxes given to lady’s maid Eva Huntford and a handful of others. Having overheard her sister and the Marquis in a heated exchange the night before, Lady Phoebe takes a personal interest in solving the mystery. As the local constable suspects a footman at Foxwood Hall, Phoebe and Eva follow the clues to a different conclusion. But both young women will need to think outside the box to wrap up this case—before a cornered killer lashes out with ill will toward them . . . “A super-fun read featuring Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva, as they put aside their society roles to risk their necks in order to catch a killer.”—Suspense Magazine “Details of the lives of the nobility and their servants, and the aftermath of the war, are woven throughout the story, and the forward-thinking Phoebe is a charming main character.”—Booklist

A trip to Staffordshire for Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, leads to murder in a famed pottery works . . . Following the devastation of the Great War, England's noble class takes comfort in honoring tradition. To celebrate their grandparents' wedding anniversary, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her siblings travel to Staffordshire to commission a china service bearing the Wroxly coat of arms from the venerated Crown Lily Potteries, a favorite of Queen Mary. The two leading designers at the illustrious china manufacturer offer competing patterns. But when one of them is found dead—his body crushed in a grinding pan and his design pattern book missing—his rival is immediately suspected. The police are also suspicious of the dead designer's resentful young son, a schoolmate of Phoebe's fifteen-year-old brother Fox. When Fox gets involved to help his friend, Phoebe begins to investigate the rival artist. At the same time, Eva is enlisted to go undercover at the works so she can gain the confidence of the female employees, who are only allowed to paint, not design, which may have led to a grudge against the victim. Pursuing a killer who has no compunction about using a kiln as a coffin, Phoebe and Eva take their lives into their hands to discover the shattering truth . . .

It is 1740 and Louise Fletcher, a young dairymaid on an Essex farm, has been warned of the lure of the sea for as long as she can remember-after all, it stole away her father and brother. But when she is offered work in the bustling naval port of Harwich serving a wealthy captain's daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. There she meets Rebecca, her haughty yet magnetic mistress. Intertwined with Louise's story is that of fifteen-year-old Luke, who is beaten and press-ganged, sent to sea against his will on the warship Essex in the service of His Majesty's Navy. He must learn fast and choose his friends well if he is to survive the brutal hardships of a sailor's life and its many dangers, both up high in the rigging and in the dark belowdecks. She Rises brings to vivid life both land and sea in Georgian England, but explores a thoroughly modern and complex love story. Bold, brilliant, and utterly original, this debut novel is an accomplished and gripping search for identity and survival.