The House on Durrow Street »

What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices that confront a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Galen Beckett began writing the stories of the Lockwell sisters to answer that question.

“A charming and mannered fantasy confection with a darker core of gothic romance” is how New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb described Galen Beckett’s marvelous series opener, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. Now Beckett returns to this world of dazzling magick and refined manners, where one extraordinary woman’s choice will put the fate of a nation—and all she cherishes—into precarious balance.
 
Her courage saved the country of Altania and earned the love of a hero of the realm. Now sensible Ivy Quent wants only to turn her father’s sprawling, mysterious house into a proper home. But soon she is swept into fashionable society’s highest circles of power—a world that is vital to her family’s future but replete with perilous temptations.

Yet far greater danger lies beyond the city’s glittering ballrooms—and Ivy must race to unlock the secrets that lie within the old house on Durrow Street before outlaw magicians and an ancient ravening force plunge Altania into darkness forever.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Galen Beckett, author of the beguiling and charming The House on Durrow Street and its predecessor, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, is in reality a writer named Mark Anthony, with six prior books to his legal name. I must confess that my glancing encounters with his early work left me uninspired, as they seemed generic high fantasy. So the name change and relaunch -- often a strategy to deal with disappointing sales and unfair audience perceptions -- was probably a necessary and good thing, catching readers like myself with our prejudices down. But of course, the tactic would have been worthless without a substantial novel or three behind it, and those goods Beckett provides in spades.