It is the early years of the twentieth-century and Edgar Allen Poe is undergoing a renewed popularity when a young and ambitious Baltimore journalist is sent to the provinces by his editor in search of a story likely to satisfy the need for sensation craved by his newspaper's circulation. What he uncovers is a tale of murder, depravity, sadism and perversion on the Eastern Seaboard that will not only require sanitizing to be made palatable for his editors readers, but will impact upon his life in a way that will leave the charge of it in the hands of another. That other being an extremely depraved female steeped in the perversities of her great-aunt and a dominant woman from his native Baltimore he has yet to even meet, let alone desire. A desire, when he does get to meet her, that will end his life as he knows it. This is the 2023 Edition of Sandrine Bessancort’s female-led take on classic period fiction.