A Factory Of Cunning

Set in late eighteenth-century England, Philippa Stockley’s American debut gives us a wickedly delightful but deadly serious battle of the wills and the sexes. It begins with the arrival in London of the mysterious Mrs. Fox—on the run from a scandalous French past—who takes a new identity, determined to reinvent herself. She must pit her formidable skills for revenge against Earl Much, a British aristocrat with no less notorious a past and easily her match in sinfulness and intrigue. Between these two swirls a story featuring venal lords, wronged maidens, and reprobate clergymen, transporting readers from bawdy houses to country estates—places where the pleasures of the flesh are both high comedy and serious business. 
 
A Factory of Cunning takes readers to the world immortal­ized in Dangerous Liaisons. And, like Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, the vividly rendered setting and characters give the thrill of a fresh discovery.
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UK PRAISE FOR THE EDGE OF PLEASURE

"A glittering novel . . . Darkly beautiful."-THE SUNDAY TIMES
"Confident, assured and highly entertaining . . .A vividly sensual novel."-EVENING STANDARD
"There is much to enjoy in Stockley's sly, tart mix of sex, painting and mischance, confected with a naughty, sophisticated glitter." -DAIL Y MAIL