Galen Beckett - The House on Durrow Street

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett is a charming and mannered fantasy confection with a darker core of gothic romance wrapped around a mystery. Fans of any of these will enjoy it. Readers who enjoy all these genres will find it a banquet.

R OBIN H OBB , author of Dragon Haven

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is a charming and accomplished debut, sure to delight fantasy aficionados and lovers of gothic romance alike.

J ACQUELINE C AREY , author of Naamahs Kiss

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent combines the sense and sensibility of Miss Austen with the sweep and romantic passion of the Miss Bronts in a fantastical feast of delights. From the moment I encountered the resourceful and charming Miss Ivoleyn Lockwell, I was eager to follow her from the fashionable streets of the city to her new employment as governess at lonely Heathcrest Hall on the windswept and rugged moorlands. In Altania, Galen Beckett has created a fascinating and engaging world where the formalities and courtesies of polite society conceal the emergence of a dark and ancient force that threatens to destabilize the kingdom and destroy everything that Ivy holds dear.

S ARAH A SH , author of Flight into Darkness

An enchanting blend of Victorian melodrama, Edwardian comedy of manners, and magic, a trip into an alternate universe in which top-hatted gentlemen dabble in magic and young women of great spirit are as beleaguered by their lack of dowry as they are by the evil villains. The characters are convincing, the plot vertiginous, and the danger bone-chilling.

D ELIA S HERMAN , author of The Porcelain Dove

I loved reading this piquant page-turner of a retro-modernist fantasy novel. But its more than just a rattling good time. Like its characters, it is not merely devastatingly clever, but has a heart and a soul.

E LLEN K USHNER , author of The Privilege of the Sword

Wonderful! Jane Austen meets high fantasy. Just a delightful story in a parallel world of magic and adventure.

B ARB AND J. C. H ENDEE , authors of the Noble Dead saga

Galen Becketts debut cleverly mixes fantasy and literary in a novel that imagines the social strictures that hemmed in Austens and Bronts heroines are the result of magical intervention. The novels supernatural elements and imaginary (but familiar-seeming) setting allow Beckett to examine class and economic conflicts from the outside, without resorting to polemics. The result is a work that mixes the rich pleasures of a Victorian epic with elements of the fantastic, an imaginative eye and a dry sense of humor.

NPR.org

The enchanting The Magicians and Mrs. Quent evokes memories of other pseudo-Victorian-Edwardian fantasies, but the writing and execution are vastly superior. Galen Beckett reconfigures what could be stereotypical into an exciting and clever romp.

Omnivoracious

Beckett has given us a rich world in The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. I was so entranced with this strange world that I kept reading and when the story finally began to unfold it just drew me along to the final act. Its a story of character, courage, and honor more than rip-roaring adventure. The story pulls you into the world and then much later into the action. Luckily for the reader, the characters are interesting enough in their own right to keep the pages turning.

SFRevu

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is the most proficiently written first novel that Ive read since Susanna Clarkes Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Oozes with a keen wit and endearing charm [The] characters are superbly crafted, highlighted by sparkling dialogue and distinctive personalities. A riveting blend of drama, romance, mystery, thrills, misdirection and fantasy superior craftsmanship remarkably charming, witty, and entertaining.

Fantasy Book Critic

Fans of Jane Austen and the Bront sisters will be in a familiar landscape reading The Magicians and Mrs. Quent.

Kansas City Star

Very, very good This is one ride to board early.

San Jose Mercury News

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

The House on Durrow Street is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Spectra Trade Paperback Original

Copyright 2010 by Mark Anthony

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spectra Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

S PECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed s are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Beckett, Galen
The house on Durrow Street / Galen Beckett.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52271-9
1. Young womenEnglandFiction. 2. Good and evilFiction. 3. MagicFiction. 4. EnglandSocial life and customs19th centuryFiction. I. Title.
PS3551.N725H68 2010
813.6dc22 2010016611

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

For my own sisters

Victoria, Augusta, Elizabeth,
and Margaret

CHAPTER ONE

I VY WOKE TO the sound of voices.

She sat up and reached for Mr. Quent beside her, wondering if he had murmured something in his sleep as he often did. Her hand found only a cold tangle of bedclothes. He was gonea fact her dull mind recalled after a momentoff to the north of Altania on business for the lord inquirer. He had left nearly a quarter month ago and would not return before Darkeve at the end of the month.

Besides, it was not from inside the bedchamber that the murmuring had come.

Ivy rose, gathering a nightgown around her, for it was late in a long umbral and the coals in the fireplace had burned to cinders. She stood in a beam of moonlight that had slipped through a gap in the curtains, listening. Was Rose wandering the house in the night as was her habit, singing softly to herself? Or perhaps it was Lily, making exclamations as she read by candlelight in her room, turning the final pages of one of her romances.

Ivy heard nothing save the beating of her own heart. The high hedges outside guarded against the noises of the city, and the old house on Durrow Street was silent. She turned to go back to bed.

This time the voices were louder: a chorus of whispers that seemed to come from outside her bedchamber door. By the deep tones, it was neither Lily nor Rose. Nor could it be any of the servants; their quarters were still under renovation, and they were not yet in residence. Which meant the moonbeam was not the only interloper in the house.

A dread descended over Ivy. Not three months ago, upon his return to the city from Torland, a band of revolutionaries had set upon Mr. Quent as he met with the lord inquirer. Their intent had been nothing less than murder. However, Mr. Quent had been warned of the attack beforehand, and the rebels were apprehended before they could act. Yet if they had desired to do violence to agents of the Crown, it was not difficult to believe there were others who might wish the same.