num_pages: 224
description: From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: a mystery set in 1850s Gold Rush California as two young prostitutesbest friends Eliza and Jeanfollow a trail of missing girls.Monterey 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life at least at first. The madam Mrs. Parks is kind the men are (relatively) well behaved and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town a darkness descends that she cant resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean and inspired by her reading especially by Edgar Allan Poes detective Dupin Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild Westa bewitching combination of beauty and dangeras what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon. As Mrs. Parks says Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business but between you and me being a woman is a dangerous business and dont let anyone tell you otherwise 
language: English
title: A Dangerous Business
publisher: Knopf