The Stockholm Octavo
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“Delicious…The essence of witty intelligence.
Readers will delight [in] every element in this Swedish weave, from the brutal
winter weather to the unfurling of a lady’s fan. The plot is an urgent one, and
the characters mysterious, appealing, and memorable…I felt a real kinship with
author Karen Engelmann.”
Sena Jeter Naslund, New York Times bestselling author of Ahab’s Wife
An Indie Next List Pick of the Month
A Kirkus Reviews “New and Notable Title” of the Month
Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
For fans of Patrick Suskind's classic Perfume comes a dazzling debut set during Stockholm's opulent golden age and brilliantly interweaving history, romance, and intrigue—a story in which one man's fortune holds the key to a nation's precarious fate.
Life is close to perfect for Emil Larsson, a self-satisfied bureaucrat in the Office of Customs and Excise in 1791 Stockholm. He is a true man of the town—a drinker, card player, and contented bachelor—until one evening when Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, a fortune-teller and proprietress of an exclusive gaming parlor, shares with him a vision she has had: a golden path that will lead him to love and connection. She lays an octavo for him, a spread of eight cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision—if he can find them.
Emil begins his search, intrigued by the puzzle of his octavo and the good fortune Mrs. Sparrow's vision portends. But when Mrs. Sparrow wins a mysterious folding fan in a card game, the octavo's deeper powers are revealed. For Emil it is no longer just a game of the heart; collecting his eight is now crucial to pulling his country back from the crumbling precipice of rebellion and chaos.
Set against the luminous backdrop of late eighteenth-century Stockholm, as the winds of revolution rage through the great capitals of Europe, The Stockholm Octavo brings together a collection of characters, both fictional and historical, whose lives tangle in political conspiracy, love, and magic in a breathtaking tale that will leave you spellbound.
Praise