Black rubber dress

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Madeleine E. Robins

In a Regency London that isn't quite the one we know, young women of family whose reputations have been ruined are known as the Fallen. Young Sarah Tolerance is one such: a daughter of the nobility who ran away with her brother's fencing-master. Now that the fencing-master has died, everyone expects her to earn her living as a whore. But Sarah is unwilling. Instead, she invents a new role for herself, and a new vocation: "investigative agent." For Sarah, with her equivocal position in society, is able to float between social layers, unearth secrets, find things that were lost, and lose things too dangerous to be kept. Her stock in trade is her wits, her discretion, and her expertise with the smallsword -- for her fencing-master taught her that as well. She will need all her skills soon, when she is approached by an agent of the Count Verseillon, for a task that seems routine: reclaim an antique fan he once gave to "a lady with brown eyes." The fan, he tells her, is an heirloom; the lady, his first love. But as Sarah Tolerance unravels the mystery that surrounds the fan, she discovers that she--and the Count--are not the only ones seeking it, and that nothing about this task is what it seems.

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Mo Hayder

What if you found yourself divorced and penniless? With no skills and a teenage daughter to support? What if the only way to survive was to do things you never thought possible? These are questions Sally has never really thought about before. Married to a successful business man, shes always been a bit of a dreamer. Until now. When Sally's daughter gets into difficulties, Sally finds she needs cash - lots of it - fast. With no one to help her, she is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing ...

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Cath Staincliffe

She's a single parent. A private eye. And loving it. Until, that is, Mrs Hobbs turns up asking Sal Kilkenny to find her missing son. Sal's search takes her through the Manchester underworld, a wasteland of deprivation and petty theft, of well-heeled organised crime and, ultimately, murder. Would she have taken the job if she had known what she was getting herself into? Actually, yes. Sal is on fire with a desire to see justice done and to avenge the death of a young lad whose only crime was knowing too much ...

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Christine Poulson

From publisher: All is not well at Cambridge University's St. Ethelreda's College. The head of the English Department is dead, and Professor Cassandra James is appointed the task of running the department. Faced with the choice of whipping her underperforming colleagues into shape or losing the much-needed funding for the program, Cassandra resigns herself to the challenge. However, when she stumbles upon the former head's private papers and realizes that the death was no accident, Cassandra is forced to use her academic expertise of solving obscure literary puzzles for a very different purpose: tracking down a killer.