At his first meeting with Alva, she turns him down flat. Having made a ton of money from his inventions, he is indulging his passions trying to prove, scientifically, that ghosts really do exist. Samuel Moore is brilliant and comes from a family of equally brilliant people. That is when she meets a hot, hunky, wealthy, eccentric scientist who wants to study her ghost. Just one slight problem: the place is haunted, and the ghost is not a friendly spirit.

Upon return to New York, she embarks on a new course planning to buy and renovate a crumbling wreck of a house, Liefdehuis in Hyde Park, and write a book about it that would appeal to the emerging middle class of people looking to improve their own homes. In Paris she found she has a talent for interior design and writing. He at least had the good grace to get murdered, but even that event didn't free Alva.īut Alva isn't one to stay down for long. For 10 years she endured and finally she left him only to be pilloried in the press and disgraced. Disgraced, married off, taken to Paris, and abused. Ava Webster was a product of the upper social classes and when, at 17 with her life just beginning, she becomes a victim of a man who wanted nothing more than her money. But the class system was still in full control of the wealth and with that the social rules. New York City in the Gilded Age of 1875 was a marvelous time of scientific advancement and turning this country from the agricultural age into the industrial age.

He was a wonderful character and very much the grounding that the heroine needed. She is very complicated and very much a product of her upbringing and the 1875 time period. I can't say I liked the heroine, although I did understand her. I thought I was getting a ghost gothic and got something much more.

Set during the Gilded Age in New York City, The Widow of Rose House is a gorgeously romantic debut by Diana Biller, with an intrepid and resilient American heroine guaranteed to delight readers as she starts over and finds true love.Very interesting plot as well as time period and setting. Together, the two delve into the tragic secrets wreathing Alva’s new home while Sam attempts to unlock Alva’s history-and her heart. Unfortunately, Sam is the only one who can help. Alva doesn’t need more complications in her life, especially not a convention-flouting, scandal-raising one like Sam. She is decidedly not supposed to fall in love.īut when a haunting at her new home threatens her careful plans, she must seek help from the eccentric and brilliant and - much to her dismay - very handsome Professor Samuel Moore. After three years of being pilloried in the presses for fleeing her abusive husband, his sudden death allows her to return to New York where she is determined to restore a dilapidated Hyde Park mansion, and hopefully her reputation at the same time. It’s 1875, and Alva Webster is ready for a fresh start.

The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller