It began with a simple note: a letter of rejection delivered to Miss Temple on her maid's silver tray. But for Miss Temple, her fiance's cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for truth, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors. Thus begins Gordon Dahlquist's spectacular literary debut, a novel of Victorian suspense that shatters conventions and seethes with danger and eroticism.

Miss Temple's pursuit soon leads to a remote, forbidding estate where all inhibitions are laid bare and shocking discoveries lie behind its closed doors: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic—both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. The search for answers hurtles this unlikely trio from elegant brothels and gaslit alleyways to astonishing moments of self-discovery and ever-mounting peril. For the conspiracy they face—a perverted alchemy of science, religion, and lust for power—is terrifying beyond belief

By turns brutal and tender, shocking and deliciousiy romantic, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters is a novel for the ages, a bold and brilliant work of the imagination.

Playwright Gordon Dahlquist was born in the Pacific Northwest and lives in New York City. This is his first novel.

Alfred Molina's many films include Spider-Man II, Frida, Magnolia, Chocolat , and Boogie Nights . On Broadway, he received Tony Award nominations for his starring roles in Fiddler on the Roof , and Art . Mr. Molina is the recipient of a Drama Desk Award , and an Outer Critics Circle Award .