In a novel that celebrates the power of fiction and its ultimate redeeming quality, Alice Pinkerton transports those who belittle her into her own secretly written books where they are forced to reveal their true natures, in a novel set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century New York.

For Alice Pinkerton, trapped in a suffocating life of convention and party chatter, 1903 New York Society is enough to make a woman mad—or at least a madwoman in the attic. So Alice escapes through the looking glass of literature, finding companionship and inspiration in Shakespeare, Wilde, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Poe, Austen, and the rest of the literary pantheon of her day. Like a character from one of her favorite novels, Alice holds a biting, eccentric, but expansive view of life, and through it all provides a tremendous portrait of her society—at once heartbreaking and wildly funny, intelligent and dazzling in its range.

Pinkerton’s Sister is a true celebration of the imagination and a mesmerizing example of the saving power of fiction. Most of all, it is the quintessential novel for readers.

About Peter Rushforth

Peter Rushforth’s brilliant first novel, Kindergarten, was published in 1979 and won the Hawthorden Prize (awarded to the best work of imaginative literature.) After an absence of twenty-five years he returned to the literary scene in 2004 with the epic novel Pinkerton’s Sister, which charmed critics at the Washington Post, New Yorker, and San Francisco Chronicle and was named a Booksense selection in March 2005. In the fall of 2005 Rushforth finished a sequel to Pinkerton’s Sister, an elegant novel entitled A Dead Language.

Sadly, following his final revisions to his work, Peter Rushforth passed away while walking on his beloved Yorkshire Moors. A Dead Language was published posthumously in the U.K. by Simon & Schuster.