Mad Miss Mimic

London, 1872. Seventeen-year-old heiress Leonora Somerville is preparing to be presented to society—again. She's strikingly beautiful and going to be very rich, but Leo has a problem money can't solve. A curious speech disorder causes her to stutter but also allows her to imitate other people's voices flawlessly. Servants and ladies alike call her "Mad Miss Mimic" behind her back...and watch as Leo unintentionally scares off one potential husband after another.

London in 1872 is also a city gripped by opium fever. Leo's brother-in-law Dr. Dewhurst and his new business partner Francis Thornfax are frontrunners in the race to patent an injectable formula of the drug. Friendly, forthright, and as a bonus devastatingly handsome, Thornfax seems immune to the gossip about Leo's "madness." But their courtship is endangered from the start. The mysterious Black Glove opium gang is setting off explosions across the city. The street urchins Dr. Dewhurst treats are dying of overdose. And then there is Tom Rampling, the working-class boy Leo can't seem to get off her mind.

As the violence closes in around her Leo must find the links between the Black Glove's attacks, Tom's criminal past, the doctor's dangerous cure, and Thornfax's political ambitions. But first she must find her voice.

Indigo.ca Best Teen Books of 2015

Global TV Morning Show Book Club Title (February 2016)

Shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association’s 2016 Book of the Year for Young Adults 

Shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People

Ontario Library Association 2015 Best Bets YA (honourable mention)

Education Forum's Best Canadian Books for High School Readers

"Mad Miss Mimic is a very entertaining thriller, with deep period detail - it's set in 1872 London, England - and a feminist twist." —NOW magazine

"This is the perfect beach read for that teen who got an A in History (and would rather stay inside watching Downton Abbey than go to the beach in the first place)." —The Globe and Mail

"Henstra...weaves a complex plot that reads like a combination of Austen and Conan Doyle" —Quill and Quire