"As the nineteenth century comes to a close, the illustrious Vanderbilt family dominates Newport, Rhode Island, high society. But when murder darkens a glittering affair at the Vanderbilt summer home, reporter Emma Cross learns that sometimes the actions of the cream of society can curdle one's blood..."--P. [4] of cover.

Caring for an abandoned infant during the summer of 1896, Emma Cross uses her connections to search for the child's family and discovers a link between the baby and a textile magnate who drowns under suspicious circumstances.

In the late nineteenth century, Newport, Rhode Island, is home to some of Americas wealthiest citizens. Its also the beat of society reporter Emma Cross, a less well-heeled cousin to the illustrious Vanderbilts, who occasionally moonlights in solving murders . . . Covering a polo match for the Observer, Emmas job is to take note of the real players off the fieldNewports well-bred elite. But the fashionable faðcade is breached when a woman in gaudy...

"The days are getting shorter as summer's end approaches, which means it's time for the Harvest Festival, the last big event of the season, held by Mamie Fish, wife of millionaire railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, at their grand "cottage," Crossways. The neocolonial mansion is decked out in artificial autumn splendor, and an extravagant scavenger hunt will be held. But the crowning jewel of the evening will be the guest of honor, Prince Otto of Austria....

When she stumbles upon a dead body with an arrow in it while attending a lavish Elizabethan fête in 1899, journalist Emma Vanderbilt, discovering the victim is a judge who didn’t walk the straight and narrow, must score a bull’s eye to stop the killer from taking another life.