The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett

Summary

LONDON, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.

As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything. A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.

“Your fingers may bleed with paper cuts as you tear through The Butcher’s Daughter. Retailed with consummate confidence, this novel draws out of the foggy demimonde of Victorian London all manner of mayhem. I am spellbound. You will be too, should you attend the tale.”—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West