Description
Seoul, present day. Antiques dealer Alys’s task is nearly complete. She has at last secured Elizabeth, the final anatomical Venus in a dangerously intertwined trio. Crafted in eighteenth-century London and modeled after real-life sex workers to entice male medical students to study female anatomy, these eerie wax figures, known as slashed beauties, carry unsavory lore. Legend has it that the figures are bewitched, and come to life at night to murder men who have wronged them. Now Alys embarks for England, where she knows what she must do: sever her cursed connection to the Venuses once and for all.
London, 1763. Abandoned and penniless in Covent Garden, wide-eyed Eleanor and another young woman, Emily, are taken under the wing of beautiful and beguiling Elizabeth, one of the city’s most highly desired courtesans. But as Eleanor is seduced deeper into a web of money, materialism, and men, it seems that Elizabeth may not be the savior she appears to be.
