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The Alchemist's Daughter

On sale

1st March 2009

Price: £10.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9780297858065

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From the author of Richard and Judy Book Club choice, THE ROSE OF SEBASTOPOL

‘A first-rate historical romance: it’s hard to think it will be bettered this year’ INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

When two strangers enters the manor of a brilliant alchemist and his talented young daughter, nothing will remain the same…

Dark secrets haunt the manor house at Selden in Buckinghamshire, where Emilie Selden, motherless, fiercely intelligent and beautiful, has been raised in near isolation by her father. John Selden, student of Isaac Newton, is conducting a secret experiment. He aims to turn Emilie into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist and fills her with knowledge while recording every step she takes.

In the spring of 1725, when Emilie is eighteen, father and daughter begin their most daring adventure – an attempt to breathe life into dead matter. But they are interrupted by the arrival of two strangers. During the course of a sultry August, Emilie is caught up in the passion of first love and, listening for the first time to her heart rather than her head, she makes her choice – with consequences that are far-reaching and tumultuous.

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Reviews

THE TIMES
This is an intelligent portrait of England in the early 18th century, as experienced by a remarkable young woman
INDEPENDENT
What makes THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER more than a routine entertainment is McMahon's vivid sense of both the natural world and of the smells and illuminated darkness of Selden's workroom. We believe in Emilie and come to love her for all her follies, because she is so passionate in her experience of the world around her
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
A first-rate historical romance: it's hard to think it will be bettered this year