History student Eloise Kelly is in London looking for more information on the activities of the infamous 19th century spy, the Pink Carnation, while at the same time trying to keep her mind off the fact that her mobile phone is not ringing and her would-be romantic hero Colin Selwick is not calling.Eloise is finally distracted from checking for messages every five minutes by the discovery of a brief note, sandwiched amongst the papers she's poring over in the British Library. Signed by Lord Pinchingdale, it is all Eloise needs to delve back in time and unearth the story of Letty Alsworthy and the Pink Carnation's espionage activities on the Emerald Isle.

A native of New York City, Lauren Willig has been writing romances ever since she got her hands on her first romance novel at the age of six. Like Eloise Kelly, Lauren is the proud possessor of an unfinished Harvard History department dissertation, and spent a year poring over old documents at the British Library before abandoning the academic life for the more lucrative world of law. Once Lauren received her JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, she practised as a litigation associate at a large New York firm but decided that book deadlines and doc review didn't mix and departed the law for a new adventure in full-time writerdom.