Sweet Songbird — Teresa Crane

This saga about a "spunky woman" who finds love and fame is "a convincing . . . excursion through the Victorian London underworld [and] Paris in the 1860's" (Kirkus Reviews).

Fleeing their Suffolk home in the wake of disaster, Kitty Daniels and her brother Matt arrive in the stews of nineteenth-century Whitechapel with nothing but the clothes in which they stand and, to each, a talent.

Kitty's voice may hold the key to escape from the savage squalor of the slums; but Matt's talent for thieving, whilst more immediately useful, plunges them both into deadly danger.

From the backstreets of London through fame and fortune to a Paris besieged by the Prussian armies runs Kitty's story, of undaunted courage, determined success, love -- and betrayal.

Praise for the writing of Teresa Crane:

 

"A smashing storyteller." -- The Irish Times