Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Chalice

The fierce ambitions and dangerous rivalries of literary New York in the 1840’s come vividly alive in Lynn Cullen’s riveting novel Mrs. Poe.  With masterful skill, Cullen tells the story of the real-life fatal attraction between the toast-of-the-town Gothic storyteller  Edgar Allan Poe and vulnerable poet Frances Sargent Osgood. The fact that both are unhappily married did not sanction any sort of romance in this judgmental society, and Cullen skillfully charts the course of a fraught and forbidden love affair. As the lonely Mrs. Osgood is pulled further and further into Mr. Poe’s dark world, the tensions in the Poes’ bizarre marriage explode. Full of longing, this is a story both poignant and shocking–and not easily forgotten.