City of shadows

Elizabeth Miles Bates has returned from her honeymoon with Gideon and is taking great pride in having completely forsaken her disreputable past. Then her friend, Anna Vanderslice, begs her to use her talents to save her widowed mother from a unscrupulous medium. Since the war and the flu epidemic left so many families in mourning, seances have come back into vogue as desperate families long to communicate with their loved ones. Anna's mother has been attending seances in hopes of connecting with her son, David, who died of influenza. Anna had thought it a heartbreaking but harmless activity but she's just learned that Mrs. Vanderslice is paying the medium ever-increasing sums of money in her eagerness to make contact. Since David's death has already caused Anna and her mother financial hardship, Mrs. Vanderslice's obsession is in danger of ruining them. Madame Ophelia is working with a group of con artists to fleece as many grieving New Yorkers as possible before moving on to another