If you had the chance to be remembered forever, would you be willing to sacrifice everything?
If twenty-three-year-old Camilla Farrow’s life were a theatrical play, she would be in the audience. But one summer night, she witnesses two young men dressed in Victorian costumes escaping down a manhole in an empty Boston alleyway at midnight. Curious and captivated, Camilla finally takes back her agency and does something she never would have done before: She follows them.
Camilla is pulled into the world of the Boston Revolutionary Art and Teacup Society, a secret society of eccentric artists and actors who live in an underground limestone fortress—an eighth Natural Wonder of the World that no one knows about but them. Enraptured by the fascinating, secluded world of the Boston Rats, Camilla eagerly leaves everything behind to start a different life under a new name: Lily.
But beneath the midnight tea parties, the theatrical performances, and the bardic battles lies something more sinister. Atticus, the leader of the Boston R.A.T.S., gives her the opportunity of a lifetime to help her achieve artistic brilliance and be remembered forever—at the cost of her inhibition, sanity, and possibly even human lives . . . including her own.
And Camilla is so entranced that she may just accept.
Emma Shepard is a violin prodigy on her way to achieving her ambitious dreams. Not only was she accepted to the prestigious Belmont Academy for the Performing Arts, but she is chosen as the violin soloist for the symphony’s esteemed December concert. As far as Emma is concerned, her future is golden.
But when she catches the eye of a handsome pianist, her world shatters when what was meant to be an innocent night of studying turns into tragedy, taking Emma’s agency and leaving her traumatized. Now she’s experiencing vivid nightmares in which she is a living marionette named Emmalyne, forced to perform her violin solo for the amusement of a lustful king with the face of her abuser. In these dreams, her imaginary friends from childhood return, only now they are marred and much more terrifying than she remembers them.
As her dream world begins to blend with reality, Emma is afraid she’ll end up like her aunt Sophie, who sees things that aren’t there and talks to people who don’t exist. Emma must push through the trauma she associates with her solo before the night of the concert—if her psychosis doesn’t defeat her first.
Andrea K. Vande Vorde is a lifelong book enthusiast who received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing at Loras College and her master’s degree in English Studies at Illinois State University. She is an editor by day and a writer by night, and can often be found sipping a latte in a coffee shop while editing, writing, or reading. She lives with her husband, their son, a golden retriever, and multiple cats on a lovely acreage in Iowa. The Boston Revolutionary Art and Teacup Society is her first novel.