A mysterious hero’s astonishing adventures in revolutionary France
The Age of Reason has come to France, bringing with it murder, cruelty, and terror. As the nation’s aristocrats are paraded to the guillotine, their children are handed over to revolutionary citizens for reeducation. Once a courtier at Versailles, Madeleine Lannoy now dances in the street, clinging to life so that she may one day visit revenge on Jean Paul Marat, the tyrant who stole her son. Her cause is hopeless until she meets a dashing Englishman named Sir Percy Blakeney, better known by his secret identity—the Scarlet Pimpernel.
In this electrifying installment in the world-famous historical suspense series, Sir Percy outwits bloodthirsty agents of the Terror time and time again. When the rest of Europe has turned its back on the French nobility, the Scarlet Pimpernel does not hesitate to risk his life for what is just.
This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Baroness Orczy (1865–1947) was a member of the Hungarian aristocracy, and her family settled in London when she was a teenager. At Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, and in 1903 the two collaborated on The Scarlet Pimpernel, a play about an English aristocrat’s adventures during the French revolution. The play and its subsequent novelization were great successes, and Orczy went on to write more than a dozen sequels featuring the Pimpernel and many other works of romance and mystery, including The Old Man in the Corner and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.