Robust, sly, witty, elegant, unexpected (New York Times Book Review)

Fowler's language dazzles (San Francisco Chronicle)

In Sister Noon, Karen Joy Fowler recreates a lost world so thrillingly, with such intelligence, trickery and art, that when you at last put the book down and look up from the page it all seems to linger, shimmering, around you, like the residue of a marvellous dream (Michael Chabon)

Fowler's prose is full of shimmering melancholy, and a ruminative irony that brings her characters and their world alive in the most unexpected ways - reading Sister Noon is like staring at early portrait photographs until the eyes begin to shine and your head is filled with voices that urge you to recall that these vanished lives, and your own, are stranger than you allow. A dazzling book. (Jonathan Lethem)

Fowler has a voice like no other, lyrical, shrewd and addictive, with a quiet deadpan humour that underlies almost every sentence (Newsday)

This is a remarkable novel which brings glitteringly to life an obscure milieu. (Katy Guest Independent on Sunday 2015-05-17)

Delightful. (Kate Saunders The Times 2015-05-16)

If you liked Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil you'll love this. (Wendy Holden Daily Mail 2015-05-22)

There's plenty of magic to keep readers entertained in this witty tale, plus a fascinating insight into historical San Francisco. Delightful and unexpected. (Prima 2015-05-22)

'Words were invented so lies could be told' Mary Ellen Pleasant

San Francisco in the 1890s is a town of contradictions, home to a respectable middle class, but with the Wild West lingering in the imagination, and even the behaviour, of some residents. Lizzie Hayes, a seemingly docile, middle-aged spinster, is praised for her volunteer work with the Ladies' Relief and Protection Society Home, or the Brown Ark. She doesn't know it, but she's waiting for the spark that will liberate her from convention.

When the wealthy and well-connected but ill-reputed Mary Ellen Pleasant shows up at the Brown Ark with an orphan in tow, Lizzie is drawn to them both. It is the beautiful Mrs Pleasant, object of suspicion because of her mysterious past and rumoured voodoo practise, who holds the key to freeing Lizzie's rebellious nature.

Based on real historical figures, San Francisco in the gilded age is brought vibrantly to life in Karen Joy Fowler's entertaining, evocative and sinister novel.