Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru by Karen Lee Street

Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru by Karen Lee Street

Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

A Poe and Dupin Mystery

by Karen Lee Street

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • May 2018, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

Edgar Allan Poe and C. Auguste Dupin strive to unravel a mystery involving old enemies, lost soul-mates, ornithomancy, and the legendary jewel of Peru.

Philadelphia, 1844.  

As violent tensions escalate between nativists and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe's fears for the safety of his wife, Virginia, and mother-in-law, Muddy, are compounded when he receives a parcel of mummified bird parts. Has his nemesis returned to settle an old score? Just as odd is the arrival of Helena Loddiges, a young heiress who demands Poe's help to discover why her lover died at the city's docks on his return from an expedition to Peru. 

Poe is skeptical of her claims of having received messages from birds - and visitations from her lover's ghost - but when Miss Loddiges is kidnapped, he and his friend C. Auguste Dupin must unravel a mystery involving old enemies, lost soulmates, ornithomancy, and the legendary jewel of Peru.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Excellent... Street enhances the Grand Guignol plot with a plausible and empathetic portrayal of her lead." - Publishers Weekly

"Street successfully combines historical fact with fiction. A particular treat for fans of the master of the macabre." - Booklist

"Street excels at seamlessly joining history and fiction, displaying a literary style not unlike Poe's, complete with touches of the macabre and melodramatic...Fans of Poe and Dupin will look forward to more adventures of the detecting duo." - Library Journal

"A bit like the newly imagined Sherlock Holmes movies: a dose of drama, a dash of darkness, and a little bit of humor ultimately liven up the journey." - Kirkus

This information about Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Karen Lee Street

Karen Lee Street spent her earliest years in an 18th century Pennsylvanian farmhouse with far too many things that went bump in the night. Consequently, she became a voracious reader of fairytales, mysteries, historical yarns (both true and untrue), and stories with a tinge of the Gothic.

Her debut mystery trilogy combines these elements and has been described as both literary historical crime and Gothic mystery. The protagonists are famed writer Edgar Allan Poe and his fictional creation, the ur-detective C. Auguste Dupin whose investigations take them to London in 1840; Philadelphia, 1844; and Paris, 1849.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more mysteries...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.