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Is it true that Edgar Allan Poe cheated on his tubercular, insipid young wife with a lady poet he’d met at a literary salon? Cullen makes you hope so. The man who wrote of “the bells, bells, bells” deserved a little euphony. This tale is told from the point of view of his likely lover,

…escorts you into the glittering world of New York City in the 1840s, when poets were celebrities and the admission of emotions–like silk gowns and glossy beaver hats–were a luxury…A bewitching, vivid trip into the heyday of American literary society.

Nevermore shall you wonder what it might have been like to fall deeply in love with Edgar Allen Poe … Mrs. Poe nails the period.

A page-turning tale … Readers who loved Paula McLains The Paris Wife will relish another novel based on historical scandal and romance.

A sympathetic and ironic rendering of a literary genius.

A compelling tale of ill-fated love . . . rich with period detail and suspense.

Part romance, part mystery, part biography, this fictional reenactment of the mistress of Edgar Allan Poe escorts you into the glittering world of New York in the 1840s, when poets were celebrities and the admission of emotions—like silk gowns and glossy beaver hats—were a luxury. When we meet Frances Osgood, her husband has abandoned her.

Cullen’s (The Creation of Eve; Reign of Madness) latest novel is a fictitious, yet historically based tale of a dark and delicious romance doomed from its start. Edgar Allan Poe, his wife, and his lover come to life among a cast of eccentric and notable figures from the mid-1800s American literary scene. Dark and brooding,

The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart—these scary pieces by Edgar Allan Poe stirred the emotions of the literary ladies of his time. But in 1845, Poe stirred up gossip, too, with his attention to Frances Sargent Osgood, a poet deserted by her philandering husband. Poe’s deathly ill, 23-year-old wife (his first cousin, whom he married when