A Hanging at Lotus Hall

Written by Corrina Lawson

Narrated by Ana Clements

Family secrets are the most dangerous….

All is not well at Lotus Hall, the home of the Dukes of Bennington, powerful mages who sit at the highest levels of power in the British Empire.

Consulting detective Gregor Sherringford, youngest brother of the current duke, is summoned home by his mother, the Dowager Duchess, after the mysterious arrival of a family member long presumed dead.

Joan Krieger, Gregor’s investigative partner and lover, accompanies him, though the summons is badly timed. Gregor has been pushing to get married while Joan, who saw the ruins of a marriage destroy her parents, balks. In her experience, families bring nothing but grief. Besides, she’s no proper match for Gregor, with her reputation as a “fallen” woman, and being from a Jewish merchant family.

Her fears are realized after their arrival at Lotus Hall. The duke is distant, Gregor’s mother is concealing a secret about the long-lost family member, Gregor’s other brother is hiding an affair that could bring scandal down on the family, and the other guests, important members of the Metaphysical Society, warn Joan of dire consequences if she continues to use forbidden magic in her investigations.

When one of the signature Sherringford inventions is used to kill, uncovering the truth behind all the facades becomes imperative. For someone is hunting Sherringfords and unless they can all learn to trust each other, their family will be utterly destroyed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094421001

Corrina Lawson

Corrina Lawson is an award-winning former newspaper reporter with a degree in journalism from Boston University. A mom of four, she now writes fiction in a variety of genres, from steampunk to superhero romance to alternate history. She's also written an award-winning erotic paranormal romance. She's currently a freelance journalist who has covered everything from movies to comics to television shows like Wynonna Earp and Snowpiercer and has been a panelist at conventions of all sizes, from Comic-Con in San Diego to her local con, Connecticon, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Reviews for A Hanging at Lotus Hall

[Natale Michaud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this series and would like it to continue.

[Lisa Moriah Chenthitta · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like this. I sooooo wanted to like this. The magic was intricate and the mystery was interesting … but the heroine? Wow, I could not bring myself to like her. I think the author meant her to be a “strong independent” woman, but she ends up coming off as high-handed, judgmental and emotionally closed off ~ and her backstory somehow fails to create the requisite sympathy. Listening to her lecture her BF on trust … while being a distrusting control freak herself … got old really fast. ?

That’s all disappointing, because as a Jewish woman, I was initially excited to read a Jewish steampunk heroine. But the author’s knowledge of Jewish culture (along with all the various “minority” cultures she includes) appears to be comprised of a few tired tropes. For example, the “don’t marry a goy” trope. Or the amorphous “Hebrew symbol for hope.” ? Stereotypical or made-up details like that made me want to laugh out loud. Or want to cry.

Either way … neither helped me want to root for this main character. Or this author.

[Anna James · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am 9 years old .So this book is perfect in my eyes .But I’m going to spill my feelings about it at you the amount of maturity is perfect it simply is …THE BOOK ? . It has a bunch of unexpected twists and it simply is mesmerizing because… it simply amazes me still how literature is so powerful when one uses it in such a way that I am practically speechless ? ? ?

[AR Pittman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good book just like the last and with a compelling, and well written plot. My only complaint is that the leading lady is a little too self righteous. She has zero grace for people in her life and it makes her hard to sympathize with sometimes.

[Jenna Vaughn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good one. Set in a magical Victorian era, there are steampunk vibes throughout the book. Joan and Gregor head to his family home following an attack on Joan's life. While most of his family is accepting of them, something isn't right in the ancestral home. As they uncover what's being hidden, things move much swifter when a guest is killed with magic.

[Sam Ashish · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing read, Joan realises Gregor loves her as ahe meets his family and becomes part of it, lots of magic and mystery, great book

[Kimberly L. Robinson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nope. I didn’t like this one.

This sophomore effort by Corrina Lawson about an alternate, steampunk Victorian London where magic is real isn’t nearly as good as the first book, sadly.

This volume continues the adventures of this world’s version of Sherlock Holmes, here named Lord Gregor and his distaff Watson, magical mage and former seamstress, Joan Krieger.

Between the end of the first book and the start of this one, Gregor and Joan have entered into an intimate relationship although they aren’t married. At a summons by his mother, Gregor takes Joan to his ancestral home, Lotus Hall.

There were a couple of reasons why this second book didn’t work. First of all, there was no real tension. Anyone with an even passing knowledge of Sherlock Holmes lore will know who the villain is from the very first chapter — where he is introduced by name. The whole book is spent waiting for Gregor and Joan to catch up to what the reader already knows: the guilty party is the same guilty party in *all* the Sherlock Holmes’ stories.

Mostly, though, what set my teeth on edge was Joan and how she was written. In her relationship with Gregor, she’s an absolute shrew to the point where one wonders what he supposedly sees in her. I mean, the women nags him to death!

It’s not that her complaints about Gregor’s secretiveness has no merit because it has some. It’s that I feel she blows its importance out of proportion because she hasn’t dealt with her own family trauma. It’s made her extra sensitive to the point where other people would confront Gregor over his withholding nature, yes, but not with the aggressive shrillness she does. She’s good at pointing out his faults but not her own. She also constantly berates him for not letting her act on her own and, in the very next scene, she’s gotten herself in a situation where he has to come and save her. Well, which way does she want it? Because, without him, she would have been dead before the book even got going.

I’m short, she wants to be independent but she’s not very good at it.

The other thing that bothered me was the trap alternate histories often fall into. In an alternate history, you can change one thing about that world — for example, what if Lincoln had survived his assassination attempt? And, having changed that pivotal point in history, your world building must grow out of how the world would naturally change with that alteration in mind. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can change *everything*. If a writer does that, he or she might as well set the book in the present day.

That’s the problem I had, here. The main characters were acting like people who are alive now, not in Victorian England. This history posits — and this isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the first book — that Prince Albert discovered the use of magic, formally, only about sixty or so years before the book action takes place. Naturally, this changes all of society although the nobles are the main users of magic. That’s reasonable. What’s not reasonable is that Victorian Londoners wouldn’t still be Victorian Londoners, especially since the precipitating event was so recent in their history. I refuse to believe that the characters would be okay with living outside of marriage, homosexual relationships, common-law marriages and so on. It’s not the way people of that time would think and it took you out of the book because their views were so at odds with how they really would be. Of course, there have been social rebels at all points in history, but I don’t think you’d find them all in one place and in one upper class family.

I don’t know if the author is planning another book but I probably won’t read it.