Slashed Beauties

Middle grade author Rushby (The Wish Sisters) takes readers on a globe-trotting, timeline-straddling journey in her brisk and entertaining adult debut. In modern Seoul, Alys, an esoteric antiques dealer, is on a mission to destroy a triad of wax figurines of beautiful women rumored to come to life and murder misbehaving men. The tale then rewinds to flesh out the backstory of these statuettes. In 1769 London, Eleanor finds herself disgraced and abandoned by her new husband. Hopeless and in danger of starvation, she receives unexpected help from Elizabeth, a high-class courtesan with far-reaching influence and a dark past. Soon, Eleanor meets Emily, another young girl in Elizabeth’s coterie. As Rushby pulls back the layers of Elizabeth’s past, the fates of all three women become linked to the wax figurines and, in the present, Alys’s mission becomes a race against time. Rushby’s characters are richly realized, and she doesn’t shy away from depicting the high risk of their lives as sex workers or society’s cruelty and indifference toward women on the margins. Tense and fast-paced with refreshingly unique supernatural elements, this dark fantasy should win Rushby plenty of new fans. (Sept.)