In the Lion’s Den

Bestseller Bradford adds a leisurely paced installment to her House of Falconer series (after Master of His Fate), set in Victorian England. The story tracks aspiring merchant James Falconer’s rising career at the shipping and real estate firm Malvern Market, run by Henry Malvern. While Henry’s middle-aged daughter, Alexis, the company’s expected successor, grieves for her dead fiancé, Henry promotes the ambitious James, 21, to second-in-command. After a family member embezzles from the firm, James proposes building a gallery of shops as a way to recoup those losses, but arson strikes the half-built gallery. (Though, curiously, no suspects are suggested, leaving readers to anticipate a reveal in a future series installment.) Bradford does offer a secret from James’s past love life, staging a seductive tryst between James and the lovely Irina, a dress designer, while a highly charged love affair between James and Alexis moves the plot. Bradford evokes the Victorian setting with aplomb, but a ham-handed intervention by Alexis’s late fiancé’s adult daughter, who professes to have looked up to her while telling her to “get back [her] looks,” muddles the author’s apparent appeal to current values with its adherence to Victorian convention. Series fans will enjoy following along as the plot deepens. (Oct.)