Presenting a never-before-published, holiday short story from Regency author Edith Layton! Christmas is coming to Victorian London. A poor boy living with his milliner sister in a marginal part of town discovers his cat is missing. His old dog can’t live without the cat, so he searches—and hears that the Queen has kidnapped his cat! Queen Victoria’s favorite moggie strayed, and her minions scooped up the wrong cat—or so the boy and his sister think. This Christmas novella tells how an earnest young Beefeater, his world-weary superior, and one of the wiliest criminals in London each try to find the right cat without disturbing the old queen, win the boy’s cat back—and woo the pretty sister—before the Queen leaves London for her Christmas holiday. From the servants at the palace and the Queen’s own chambers, to Billingsgate and the mudlarks’ favorite taverns, the adventures are many among the high- and low-life of Victorian London.
Author
Edith Layton wrote her first novel when she was ten. She bought a marbleized notebook and set out to write a story that would fit between its covers. Now, an award-winning author with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit, her criteria have changed. The story has to fit the reader as well as between the covers. Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television. Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same." Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee. Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League, the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy—adopted herself from a shelter—is just one member of Layton's household menagerie. Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.
