Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook

I adored Lizzie's first book, Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter. Her second is just as thrilling. I was transported to 1850's London. Once again, Pook delivers a fist-pumping heroine in Maude Horton, a meticulously researched period of history and a wonderful adventure. I loved all the details about the apothecary shop and the details of the Whaling ship in the arctic. Thoroughly recommend.

From the back

London, 1850. Constance Horton has disappeared.

Maude, her older sister, knows only that Constance abandoned the apothecary they call home, and, disguised as a boy, boarded a ship bound for the Arctic. She never returned. ‘A tragic accident’, the Admiralty called it. But Maude Horton knows something isn’t right.

When she finds Constance’s journal, it becomes clear that the truth is being buried by sinister forces. To find answers – and deliver justice for her sister – Maude must step into London’s dark underbelly, and into the path of dangerous, powerful men. The kind of men who seek their fortune in the city’s horrors, from the hangings at Newgate to the ghoulish waxworks of Madame Tussaud’s.

It is a perilous task. But Maude has dangerous skills of her own . .