In addition to winning the Locus Award for Best First Novel, Theodora Goss’s debut, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, made the list of Nebula Award finalists. It’s garnered a great deal of praise, and given Goss’s track record as an award-winning author of short fiction, that should come as no surprise.
In The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Mary Jekyll, daughter of the infamous Dr. Jekyll, follows a thread of mystery in her mother’s will that leads her to a younger sister (Diana Hyde), and to several other young women who were created as experiments in biological transmutation, including puma woman Catherine Moreaux, the literally poisonous Beatrice Rappacini, and living dead woman Justine Frankenstein. These young women, with the occasional assistance of Sherlock Holmes, learn that their “fathers” were members of a scientific organisation called the Societé des Alchimistes (SA), and that the SA are involved in the murder of poor young women—prostitutes—across London. Together, these young women uncover secrets, work for justice, and build themselves a new family—the Athena Club—with each other.
Goss has taken inspiration (and some characters) directly from 19th century pulp literature. In European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, she expands her scope—from London to Vienna and Budapest, and dashing train- and carriage-rides across middle Europe.
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