FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ON SALE: October 8, 2019 CONTACT: Sarah
Schoof, St. Martin’s Press 646.307.5568, sarah.schoof@stmartins.com
**Named a MOST
ANTICIPATED ROMANCE of 2019 by BookPage**
Advanced Praise for THE
WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE “Biller's complex and intriguing debut, set in 1875 New
York City...is part romance, part ghost story, and part period piece with just
enough modern sentiment on the topics of feminism, mental illness, and abuse.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A chemistry-fueled
debut with a bit of a ghost story, great for readers of gothic romance” —Booklist
"Utterly
irresistible. With engaging, original characters and dialogue as crisp as a new
apple, Diana Biller’s debut will have you rooting for Alva and Sam through
every spooky twist." —Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling
author of the Veronica Speedwell series
“Take a Joanna Shupe
Gilded Age romance, stir in a Simone St. James ghost story, add a pinch of
Julia Quinn banter, and, voila! Sheer fun with a satisfying emotional
conclusion.” —Lauren Willig, New York Times bestselling author of The English Wife
“Get ready to devour
Diana Biller's magnificent debut novel in one sitting. The Widow of Rose House boasts memorable and vibrant characters, a delicious romance,
great period detail, and a hint of the supernatural. Alva and Sam spring off
the page and to life, so that I now feel as though they are friends of mine.
This novel is a treat not to be missed!” —Alyssa Palombo, author of The Spellbook of Katrina
Van Tassel THE
WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE By Diana Biller
Diana Biller’s debut novel, THE WIDOW OF ROSE
HOUSE (St. Martin’s Griffin; October 8, 2019; $16.99), is a gorgeous piece of
prose, with a decidedly dark Victorian Gothic flair and an intrepid and
resilient American heroine guaranteed to delight readers everywhere.
Prior to penning this novel, Biller had one idea
in mind: “Edith Wharton, ghost hunter.” After touring Wharton’s estate, The
Mount, and the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York, she came away with a
wealth of inspiration, and THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE was born.
It’s 1875, and New York’s Gilded Age is in full
swing. After fleeing her abusive husband, Alva Webster spent three years being
pilloried in the newspapers of two continents. Now he’s dead, and she’s
returned to New York to start over, restoring Liefdehuis, a dilapidated Hyde
Park mansion for her new home decoration book and hopefully her reputation in
the process. So when the eccentric and brilliant
Professor Samuel Moore appears, threatening her fresh start with
stories of a haunting at her house, she refuses to give him access. Alva
doesn’t believe in ghosts.
A pioneer in electric lighting and a member of
the nationally-adored Moore family of scientists, Sam’s latest obsession is
ghosts. When he learns about a house with a surprising number of ghost stories,
he’s desperate to convince its beautiful owner to let him study it. Can he find
his way into her house...and her heart?
About the Author DIANA BILLER lives in Los Angeles with her
husband and their very good dog. THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE is her debut novel.
Excerpt - Chapter 1
New York City, February 1, 1875
Alva stood on the city sidewalk and sucked in a deep, triumphant gulp of air. The
clock had just struck ten—the middle of the eve ning by New York City standards—and she was
surrounded by elegantly dressed men escorting women dripping
diamonds and rolled up tightly in furs. A few feet from her, the street was busy
THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE 13
with carriages. She could smell the city: The damp fog, the sharp tang of refuse, the high floral notes of perfumed women. Horse dung.
Had she missed it? She wasn’t sure, although she knew she missed the steep, tangled streets
of Montmartre already. But it was America that
held her future
now, even as it held her past. For a second her triumph was tempered by the remembrance of the thin envelope in her pocket, a few brief lines from her mother’s secretary, thanking her for her interest in visiting and regretting that Mrs. Rensselaer would be unable to see her. Alva knew her mother, likely even now sitting down to a stiff dinner with her husband and twelve of their closest friends fifty blocks away, did indeed feel regret. She just suspected it was about giv ing birth
to her at all.
The
restaurant door opened behind her, and, recalled to the moment, she signaled to the
boy hailing cabs to find her one.
“Excuse me,” a
deep voice said. “Mrs. Webster?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Couldn’t she
stand outside
for one min- ute without some intrepid lothario assuming she must be wait ing for him? In the less than seventytwo hours she’d been back in the States,
she’d been propositioned eleven times.
Twice by friends of her
father’s.
She glanced
over her
shoulder at
the man, receiving an in stant impression of big, though he stood mostly in the shadows. “I don’t know you,”
she said, her voice
flat. “Go home to your wife.”
“But
I don’t
have a wife,” the man
said. He took a hesitant step towards her, leaving the shadows, and her eyebrows lifted.
He looked more like a laborer than a man finishing
a dinner at Delmonico’s, for all he was dressed
in a suit and tie. Sort of dressed, she amended; the suit looked like it had been made for someone two inches shorter and two inches narrower across the
14 DIANA BILLER
shoulders. “Do I need a wife to talk to you? Is it a chaperone sort of thing? I have a mother, but she’s in Ohio.”
Alva blinked. “You’re not very
good at this,” she observed. “I’m not a man, but I don’t think
it’s standard behavior to invoke one’s mother at a time like this.”
They stared at each
other in puzzlement. He was attrac tive in the sort of way she’d always imagined the heroes of west ern folktales to be: tall, broad shouldered, with a strong nose and a square jaw. He could stand to add barber to the list of people he needed to see, though, the one that started with tailor. Actually, looking at the way his dark blond hair fell into his eyes, she thought he’d better have it start with barber and go from there.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” he said finally. “Perhaps if I introduce myself—my name is Professor Samuel Moore.”
He held out
his hand. She
looked at
it, looked up
at him, and did not extend her
own. Bafflingly, he smiled at her, as though she’d done something rather clever.
Was he really a professor? He certainly didn’t look like one, not
that it
mattered,
because she made it a policy, these
days, never to talk to strange men—
“A professor of what?” she heard herself saying, although she was pleased
it at least came out with a nice air of sarcasm and disbelief.
“This and that,” he said, still
smiling. “Engineering, mostly.” She
looked at
his rumpled clothes. Yes,
she could see
that, one of those men who always had a tool in one hand and a grease can in the other. She didn’t know they were giving professorships out to men like that, but why not, after all? She was as apprecia tive of things like trains and working carriage wheels as the next
person.
And now she’d gone and encouraged him. Stupid. “I see,” she
THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE 15
said as coldly as she could manage. “Well, I’m not interested, so I’ll
wish you good evening.”
“But how can you know if you’re not interested?”
He shook his
head in
confusion, still smiling at her. The smile was . . . im pressive. “I haven’t even explained my proposition, yet.”
“I find that if
you’ve heard one proposition, you’ve heard them all,” she
replied. Stop
talking
to him,
you
idiot.
“They’re not as unique as men would like to believe.”
“But—who else has approached you? Was it Langley, from Yale?” His tone turned plaintive. “How did he hear about this before me?”
“Langley—who?”
“Piers Langley,”
he said. “No? I can’t
think of anyone else reputable—look here, if you’ve been approached by anyone from that quack Santa Fe institute you should know they’re absolute frauds.”
“Institute?” Alva said faintly. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Your house, of course. I hadn’t realized I was so behind on the news.” His face fell—What must it be like to let all your emo- tions float freely
on your face?—but he nodded gravely. “If it’s Langley, though, he’s an excellent researcher, and a decent human, too.”
“It’s not Lang—what do you want with my house?” It was
her turn to sound plaintive.
“But that’s what—” He stared at her, his brows crunched to gether. “Oh god. I
wasn’t—I wouldn’t—”
To her astonishment, a distinct touch of pink appeared in his cheeks. He cleared his throat.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am. Henry
warned me—that is, I shouldn’t have; my proposition is not of an intimate nature.”
“I’m coming to understand that,” she said.
16 DIANA BILLER
“You thought . . . do men . . . they must—good
lord.”
She began to feel in charity with this befuddled giant. “In deed,” she said. “I quite agree. But I must ask again—what is it you want with Liefdehuis?”
“To
study it,” he said. “One of
my personal interests is in metaphysical energies, you see, and from what I’ve heard, your house may prove a most interesting case. Your ghost story is so recent, you know. I hardly ever hear one claiming
to be that new—”
He broke off as she shook her head. “You almost had me con vinced that
you were unlike the majority of your sex,” she said. “And now I see you are. I’m just not sure insanity
is much of an improvement.”
To her surprise, he smiled again.
“You’re not the only one who thinks so,” he said. The embarrassment had left his face; he was quite relaxed
once more. A man who apologizes for a propo- sition and grins at an insult, Alva
thought. Where did you come from, Professor Moore?
“And I’ll admit there’s no conclusive evidence yet,” he con tinued, “but
what I have collected looks extremely promising. Certainly promising enough to warrant extensive study.”
A hint of cold pierced her thoughts. Firmly, she banished it. “You’re talking about ghosts,” she said.
“Maybe,” he
replied. “Or
I could be studying some kind of alien intelligence that just happens
to concentrate
in areas cor responding to local folklore.”
“Alien intelligence.”
“Invisible alien intelligence,” he clarified. “At least invisible to the
naked human eye. But ‘ghost’ is probably the easiest term.”
“Really.”
“People tend to go a bit strange
when you talk to them about invisible alien intelligences,” he confided. “Which is odd, when
THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE 17
you think
about it, because why are the shades of one’s dead an cestors any less unsettling?”
She found herself nodding before the
rest of her wits caught up with her. “No,” she said, not because the word corresponded with any particular question, but because she had the feeling the only way to survive
here was to stick to very blackandwhite words. His nuances were both
compelling and sticky. “I’m afraid I won’t give you access. I don’t believe in ghosts,
and I’m about to start several months’ worth of building work.”
“Don’t decide yet,” he begged. “I’m willing to pay you for the privilege, and I promise I won’t
be in the way . . . although
there is rather a lot of equipment, so I suppose—”
The boy hailing cabs caught her eye and gestured as a han som pulled up beside him.
“That’s mine,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. Good evening.”
“Wait!”
he said. “I’ll—I’ll send you a letter. Henry said
that was the way to do it—I’ll write you and explain more.”
“It won’t help,”
she said as
the cab boy helped her into the carriage. “I’m sorry. Goodbye, Professor Moore.”
Finally, he sighed acceptance and
raised his hand. “Good evening, Mrs. Webster.”
As the cab pulled away from the sidewalk, though, she looked back at him, to find him staring after her with his hands shoved in his pockets and that apparently irrepressible grin back in place. An uncomfortable lightness expanded in her chest as
she watched him standing headandshoulders taller than the passersby around him, looking back at her as though he would be perfectly happy never to look at anything else ever again.
What couldn’t I get, if I could look at people like that? she thought, and settled grumpily back against
her seat.
For more information or to set up an interview with Diana Biller,
please contact:
Sarah Schoof, St.
Martin’s Press 646.307.5568, sarah.schoof@stmartins.com
THE WIDOW OF ROSE HOUSE
by Diana Biller Published by St. Martin’s Griffin | On sale: October 8, 2019
Trade Paperback Original | ISBN: 9781250297853 | $16.99
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