Author: Lucy May Lennox

Narrators: Duke DeFoix, Duchess DeFoix, Olivia Featherton, Earl Tyrone

Length: 14 hours 56 minutes

Publisher: Lucy May Lennox

Released: Oct. 10, 2020

Genre: Historical Fiction

London, 1735. Covent Garden offers a world of pleasures and diversions, even for a blind man. Tom Finch approaches life with boundless good cheer and resilience, whether he’s pursuing a musical career or pursuing women. And as for his blindness, to him it’s merely an inconvenience. Join Tom for a picaresque romp through high and low Georgian society among rakes, rovers, thieving whores and demi-reps, highway robbers, bigamists, and duelists, bisexual opera divas, castrati, mollies, and cross-dressers, lecherous aristocrats, and headstrong ladies. This meticulously researched, witty and lively tale overturns stereotypes about disability and revels in the spectacle and excitement of 18th century opera.

 

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• Tom Finch: Composer of broadside ballads, music master and conductor in the opera houses around Covent Garden, London. Illegitimate son of a poxy earl and a commoner, raised by his uncle who gave him a thorough education in music, drinking, and seducing women. Blind since early childhood but independent and self-reliant, he gets about using echolocation, a walking stick, and a mental map of Covent Garden. Unflaggingly cheerful, good-natured and optimistic, given to libertinism and wantonness but finds his rake’s progress continually interrupted by his musical talent and innate decency…
  • age: 30
  • height: 6 feet
  • appearance: very thin and tall, with sandy brown hair worn long and tied in a queue, always dressed stylishly in a surcoat, brocade waistcoat, white hose, and tricorne hat
• Tess Turnbridge: Aspiring opera diva with a burning ambition to become prima donna of the Theatre Royal. Daughter of a famous Italian soprano and an English composer. Recently returned to London, having left Naples under somewhat scandalous circumstances. Kind-hearted and level-headed, but not above giving into temptation, from either men or women…
  • age: 25
  • height: 5 feet 3 inches
  • appearance: slender but very feminine, with dark brown curls and dark eyes, usually dressed in a robe a la francaise
• Sally Salisbury: Infamous whore, part time pickpocket, shoplifter, and house breaker, with occasional forays into forgery and highway robbery. Fearless, fun-loving and with no pretense to polite manners, she lets most men know she’s only after their money. But she always treats Tom as an equal and without a trace of pity, and he can’t help but love her for it, even though he knows he shouldn’t trust her…
  • age: maybe 25 or so? She’s not sure.
  • height: 5 feet 7 inches
  • appearance: tall and angular, not very feminine, lank blonde hair and blue eyes, sometimes dresses in men’s clothing
• Jem Castleton: Tom’s crony and amanuensis, an unrepentant rogue, often found lushing it with the whores around Covent Garden, but also not averse to visiting a molly house.
• Lady Sarah Grey: Tom’s dowager aunt and chief benefactor. A keen patron of the opera, she encourages his career but he often finds her aid is not without some emotional price.
• Captain Philip Moorehouse, RN: Tom’s half-brother, another of the earl’s many illegitimate sons. Post captain without a ship. Closeted gay man in a relationship with a Marine captain.
• Charlotte Carstone: Tom’s half-sister, one of the cast-off daughters of the earl’s first wife. Comes to Tom for aid in fleeing her abusive husband.

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