The Nightmare — Nancy Means Wright

Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft meets Henry Fuseli at her publisher's circle of intellectuals, philosophers, and artists, and becomes obsessed with him and his erotic painting The Nightmare. When it is stolen, Fuseli accuses young painter Roger Peale, who is clapped into Newgate Prison. Escaping with the aid of a French émigré from the Revolution, Peale is ambushed by a highwayman and taken to a madhouse. Meanwhile Fuseli's footman, a witness to the theft, is killed in a carriage “accident.” And bluestocking Isobel Frothingham is strangled after a soiree and posed to resemble Fuseli's perverse masterpiece. Wollstonecraft's impetuous nature leads her to propose a ménage à trois with Fuseli and his wife, and when rebuffed -- always on the side of the underdog -- to investigate the case to clear the young artist and rescue Isobel's illegitimate daughter. Wright's first mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft, Midnight Fires, was called “captivating” by Publishers Weekly. And mystery author Patricia Wynn says, “The Nightmare does what good historical fiction should do -- makes me wonder where the truth ends and fiction begins.”