The Betrayal of Cora Wexford

Summary

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dinner for Vampires, Bethany Joy Lenz, comes a romantic psychological thriller set in Victorian-era London when Jack the Ripper’s victims were still invisible women.

1880s London. Cora Wexford is single and childless at thirty-eight, with secrets that drove her to flee life in America and come to London. Now, she makes a living by painting the dead.

On the evening of her birthday, she is introduced through friends to a charming and successful stranger named Miles Vale. As Cora falls deeper into trust and surrender with Miles, she’s given an opportunity to catapult her career. A suffragist and esteemed gallery owner commission Cora to create a series of portraits featuring ordinary women whose recent deaths have been caused or enabled by a system that ignores them. But when several women turn up murdered in the same gruesome way, Cora’s work turns to obsession and her life begins unraveling. Is it the city’s brutal violence or something closer? As her relationship with Miles becomes increasingly disorienting, she can’t stop herself from asking one question: Is it worse to die like a victim of this “Jack the Ripper” or to be dismantled over years, one slice at a time, by someone sharing your bed?

The Betrayal of Cora Wexford is a gripping novel of psychological suspense that examines intertwined themes of desire, manipulation and community complicity—and shows how truly terrifying love can be.