Suddenly the Housekeeper of an upper-class London home in a period of unmatched upheaval, Tess Newman is determined to draw on her practical nature to see her way through. What she does not know is that yet more tragedy lays upon the horizon, which will test her fortitude to its extremes.

Felicité Findley is an aspiring artist (and sometimes, stunner licked upon the canvas) who hopes to find her own path to life through living beneath her older sister and her inherited house. With her sister having succumbed with grief for the sudden death of her sailor husband, Felicité ventured to London from Oxford in order to act as confidante and well meaning aid. But, as always, the life to adulthood is never quite so simple, and as the future begins to dawn on this aspiring young woman, Felicité worries that all she has worked toward has been done for nothing.

Maggie is a maid who is usually sweet ray of country sunshine. However, she returns to London under a cloudy sky. Will the clouds clear for her or are there more storms on the horizon?

Mrs. Alice Johnson-Riley is an unassuming governess recently arrived from Boston. Looking to start over with a new life, she seeks employment with a respectable family, with impeccable references from New York. And it all looks perfectly ordinary on paper, does it not? A flawless referral delivered by a thirty-six-year-old woman with freckled skin and eyes a bewitching shade of hazel-green. A woman whose father named her Amira Hanım Andrews Al-Rashid, after his wife died shortly after bringing the tiny little girl into the world ahead of her time. A woman who certainly spent her time as a governess in her twenties — but whose current interests lie in providences that wax poetical. By law or by hand, ancient mysteries mixed up in recent tragedies, and the combination creates a woman with a singular agenda: find out who killed her family.