A stunning debut for author Evie Dunmore and her Oxford suffragists in which a fiercely independent vicars daughter takes on a powerful duke in a fiery love story that threatens to upend the British social order

England 1879 Annabelle Archer the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford In return for her scholarship she must support the rising womens suffrage movement Her charge recruit men of influence to champion their cause Her target Sebastian Devereux the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britains politics at the Queens command Her challenge not to give in to the powerful attraction she cant deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for

Sebastian is appalled to find a suffragist squad has infiltrated his ducal home but the real threat is his impossible feelings for greeneyed beauty Annabelle He is looking for a wife of equal standing to secure the legacy he has worked so hard to rebuild not an outspoken commoner who could never be his duchess But he wouldnt be the greatest strategist of the Kingdom if he couldnt claim this alluring bluestocking without the promise of a ringor could he

Locked in a battle with rising passion and a will matching her own Annabelle will learn just what it takes to topple a duke

With her sterling debut Evie Dunmore dives into a fresh new space in historical romance that hits all the right notesEntertainment Weekly

There is nothing quite so satisfying as seeing such a man brought to his knees by a beautiful woman with nothing to her name except an inviolable sense of her own selfworthNPR