New York City, 1894. To Gramercy Park, bordered by elegant town houses, cloistered behind its high iron fence, comes Mario Alfieri, a celebrated tenor and the toast of Europe. Poised for his premier at the Metropolitan Opera, the summit of society, Alfieri needs a refuge from the clamor of New York’s elite . . . and from the eager women who rule it. He finds it, he thinks, at Gramercy Park, in the elegant mansion of the recently deceased Henry Ogden Slade. The house is available, but not quite empty. Clara Adler, Slade’s former ward, lives there still, friendless and alone. Who is this bewitching young woman? Why did Slade take her into his home, only to leave her penniless at his death? And what tragedies and terrors have left Clara little more than a pale and frightened ghost, haunting the deserted mansion? Mystified, then enchanted, Alfieri is soon involved in an intrigue that spans two decades and pits him against a vicious enemy who swears to destroy both him and the woman he loves . . . and whose weapons are scandal, murder, and the revelations of Clara’s past...

Opera enthusiast and self-described worshipper of all things Victorian, first-time novelist Paula Cohen merges her two obsessions in Gramercy Park, a ripping good yarn set in Manhattan in 1894 that contains as many corsets as it does arias. When an elderly businessman and philanthropist dies, he leaves behind a Gramercy Park mansion and a beautiful but sickly ward named Clara. Enter the swarthy Italian tenor Mario Alfieri, who has recently arrived for his debut on the American opera scene, and whose velvet voice belies his womanizing swagger. Mario falls in love with Clara, whom he marries hastily as protection against Thaddeus Chadwick, the nefarious lawyer who covets his dead client's millions and his appealing ward--but not necessarily in that order. With plenty of standing ovations and fainting spells, vengeful threats and sexual deviancies, this is the sort of fiction that weaves a passionate tapestry of a tale and, in doing so, a reverent approximation of an era. Cohen concocts the repressed and proper past with plenty of titillation for a modern audience. In doing so, it's hard for the reader to decide which time period the book really belongs to, only you have to keep reading to see if the tenor sings a final, happy song. --Emily Russin