Constance Sayers (A Witch in Time) conjures a dark vision of a demonic circus lost in time in this atmospheric paranormal mystery.
"Todd might have left her, but... he never would have abandoned his car," Lara Barnes thinks of her fiancé, who went missing on their wedding day 10 years ago. Despite the observation, she has always believed Todd disappeared of his own volition. However, local police chief Ben Archer notes that he vanished on the 30-year anniversary of an eerily similar incident. When Lara comes into possession of her great-grandmother Cecile Cabot's journals, she uncovers the secret history of a mysterious circus that once tantalized 1920s Paris, including the famous American expat community. A place of dark beauty, cruelty and dangerous magic, Le Cirque Secret and its pitiless owner hold the key to Todd's disappearance and Lara's own supernatural powers. Her quest for answers will take her from Virginia to Paris and into a world of whimsy and horror where she soon learns why "few people run away from the circus."
To make the inevitable comparison, Sayers's Le Cirque Secret is as spellbinding as Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus--but several shades darker. Ladies of the Secret Circus, both decadent and chilling, is at once mystery, fantasy, romance and a tale of dark obsession that would make Edgar Allan Poe swoon. Evocative of a Golden Age horror movie, it will leave readers wishing one of Le Cirque's magical tickets might find its way to them. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads