The Marriage Method

Bestseller Matthews’s exciting second Crinoline Academy Victorian romance (after Rules for Ruin) brings together a prim schoolteacher and a newspaper editor desperate for a big story. Penelope “Nell” Trewlove of Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies heads to London to meet with Miles Quincey, editor of the London Courant, who has been asking persistent questions about the school, which prefers to keep secret its ultra-progressive curriculum for young women. When an innocent mishap caused by Miles’s scene-stealing rescue cat leads him and Nell to be caught in an apparently compromising position, Miles gallantly proposes marriage to save both their reputations. Meanwhile, a prospective Miss Corvus student has disappeared on her way to the school, as has one of Miles’s employees, the paper’s gossip columnist. When the two incidents turn out to be connected, the reluctant newlyweds join forces to investigate, taking them to the seediest parts of London and a high-stakes party at a country estate. Love blossoms along the way, as Miles learns to respect his wife’s fierce independent spirit and refusal to back down from a challenge. The result is an appealing Victorian romance that will please Matthews’s fans, cat lovers, and anyone who appreciates intelligent, resourceful heroines. (Nov.)