A Factory of Cunning

"Set in late eighteenth-century England, Philippa Stockley's American debut gives us a wickedly delightful but deadly serious battle of the wills and the sexes. It begins with the arrival in London of the mysterious Mrs. Fox--on the run from a scandalous French past--who takes a new identity, determined to reinvent herself. She must pit her formidable skills for revenge against Earl Much, a British aristocrat with no less notorious a past and easily her match in sinfulness and intrigue. Between these two swirls a story featuring venal lords, wronged maidens, and reprobate clergymen, transporting readers from bawdy houses to country estates--places where the pleasures of the flesh are both high comedy and serious business. A Factory of Cunning takes readers to the world immortal-ized in Dangerous Liaisons. And, like Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, the vividly rendered setting and characters give the thrill of a fresh discovery."--Publisher's website. Assuming a new identity to put distance between herself and her scandalous French past, Mrs. Fox pits her formidable skills for revenge against a notorious earl, in a story involving venal lords, wronged maidens, and reprobate clergymen.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.