Lucy Parkens

Description:

In the fog-choked slums of 1904 London, sixteen-year-old orphan Lucy Parkens discovers a crescent-shaped mark behind her ear – a mark that a shadowy secret society called the Circle has been hunting for generations. When a dying workhouse inmate gives her a hidden diary, Lucy learns that her mother was one of the “marked,” and that the Circle experiments on children like her. Hunted by the elegant but ruthless Madame Vesper and her agents, Lucy must escape the workhouse, flee across the rooftops of Whitechapel, and stow away on a cargo ship to Liverpool – all while protecting her dying friend Tommy and a young marked girl named Eliza. This gritty, psychological thriller explores poverty, survival, and the cost of resistance, with no supernatural elements – only the terrifying reality that some secrets are worth killing for.

subjects: historical fiction,  thriller,  conspiracy,  orphan,  marked children,  secret society,  Victorian London,  poverty,  survival,  psychological drama,  workhouse,  street urchin,  Mystery

People: Lucy Parkens,  Madame Vesper,  Tommy Briggs,  Maggie

Places: London,  Whitechapel (London, England),  Liverpool (England),  Manchester (England),  Thames River (England),  Bethnal Green (London)

Times: 1904,  Edwardian era,  1900s