The Phoenix Crown

Versailles, 1912. At the height of an intoxicating Paris summer, a mysterious American millionaire attends a sumptuous costume ball with his bride, on whom he has bestowed the legendary Phoenix Crown—a priceless relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace. The party of the century kicks off with three hundred guests, nine hundred bottles of champagne—and one quest for justice that spans two continents and six years.

San Francisco, 1906. In a bustling city of newly minted millionaires and hopeful upstarts, four very different women cross paths: a resourceful Chinatown embroideress desperately searching for her lost love, a silver-voiced soprano who performs alongside Enrico Caruso, a mysteriously disappeared artist, and an independent female botanist obsessed with collecting a rare flower that only blooms at night. One man seemingly holds the key to their questions: Henry Thornton, the charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the Phoenix Crown.

The women’s lives are thrown into chaos when the San Francisco earthquake rips the city apart and Thornton disappears . . . leaving a mystery in his wake that reaches further than anyone could have imagined.