What is Lyndsay Faye reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham.

Her entry begins:

I’m in the middle of some really wonderful books just now I’ll get to in a second, but first of all I recently finished The School of Night by Louis Bayard. I love, love, love his novels, and his newest is fantastic. It’s a mystery that spans multiple centuries and narratives, focusing on the mysterious brotherhood of Elizabethan scientists and free thinkers of which Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Harriot were a part. There are murders, mysterious and ancient stolen letters of incalculable value, three love stories, and fantastic amalgam of amateur crimesolving, science, poetry, and alchemy. Bayard’s style is evocative and deeply intelligent without ever being showy, and...[read on]

About The Gods of Gotham, from the publisher:

1845. New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever.

Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this new "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward-at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum.

One night while making his rounds, Wilde literally runs into a little slip of a girl-a girl not more than ten years old-dashing through the dark in her nightshift ... covered head to toe in blood.

Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life.

Learn more about the book and author at Lyndsay Faye's website.

Writers Read: Lyndsay Faye (May 2009).

Writers Read: Lyndsay Faye.

--Marshal Zeringue