1. The Diamond of Drury Lane
London, January 1790. Cat Royal has grown up among actors, musicians and stagehands at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. When the theatre owner entrusts her with a secret connected to a hidden diamond, Cat becomes the only person who knows where several dangerous men believe a…
2. Cat Among the Pigeons
Cat's friend Pedro is threatened when the man who formerly enslaved him arrives in London and claims that Pedro remains his property. To keep him hidden, Cat enters a boys' school in disguise and searches for legal and public support against a system prepared to treat…
3. Den of Thieves
When Drury Lane closes temporarily, Cat loses both her work and her home. Richard Brinsley Sheridan sends her to Paris as part of a theatre company, where her dancing and street knowledge make her useful in gathering information during the first years of the French Revolution.…
4. Cat O’nine Tails
A visit to fashionable Bath begins with a ball and ends with Cat separated from her friends and drawn into a plot against Lord Francis. Disguise and misadventure carry her aboard a Royal Navy vessel, where the discipline of shipboard life leaves little room for the…
5. Black Heart of Jamaica
Cat and Pedro travel to Jamaica with a theatre company, hoping for adventure and employment. The island instead confronts them with plantation slavery and the return of Hawkins, the man who once claimed ownership of Pedro and remains determined to control his future. Piracy, escape and…
6. Cat’s Cradle
In 1792 Cat receives a letter from New Lanark claiming to contain information about the family she has never known. She travels to Scotland and enters the new world of cotton manufacturing, where children and adults work under rules very different from the informal community of…