Canongate Books The Death of Shame (3, 2025) | Ambrose Parry

1854, Edinburgh. Respectable faces hide private sins. Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping fund Dr Will Raven's emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a doctor. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened when her help is sought in the search for a missing woman. Annabel Banks was promised a job in a prestigious household, but she never appeared at her employer's house, and there has been no word from her since. Sarah's inquiries lead her to discover the plight of hundreds of girls ensnared in Edinburgh's many brothels: lured, abused and left ruined in the eyes of a society obsessed with moral purity. Meanwhile, when a prominent society figure throws himself from the Scott Monument, Raven is asked to establish whether the death was indeed suicide and, if so, what might have driven this highly successful man to take his own life. Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes Raven and Sarah into a treacherous labyrinth of exploitation, corruption and high-level complicity. In a world where people are the prisoners of their secrets, the death of shame is the only path to liberty.