num_pages: 384
description: Versailles 1912. At the height of an intoxicating Paris summer a mysterious American millionaire attends a sumptuous costume ball with his bride on whom he has bestowed the legendary Phoenix Crowna priceless relic of Beijings fallen Summer Palace. The party of the century kicks off with three hundred guests nine hundred bottles of champagneand one quest for justice that spans two continents and six years.San Francisco 1906. In a bustling city of newly minted millionaires and hopeful upstarts four very different women cross paths: a resourceful Chinatown embroideress desperately searching for her lost love a silver-voiced soprano who performs alongside Enrico Caruso a mysteriously disappeared artist and an independent female botanist obsessed with collecting a rare flower that only blooms at night. One man seemingly holds the key to their questions: Henry Thornton the charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the Phoenix Crown.The womens lives are thrown into chaos when the San Francisco earthquake rips the city apart and Thornton disappears . . . leaving a mystery in his wake that reaches further than anyone could have imagined.
language: English
title: The Phoenix Crown
publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks