“Love, murder, race, class, and memory collide in a mesmerizing swirl of licit and illicit desire that was old New York in the age of the robber barons. . . . This is a delicious read that lives in profound conversation with Wharton’s House of Mirth and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.” —Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints

“A randy, rollicking tour of Gilded Age excess, racism, and misogyny.”—Booklist (starred review)

Hannah Elias isn’t proud of the things she’s had to do to survive in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Hungering for a better life, she sheds her past, slips into a new identity, and moves to New York City, where she quietly begins to invest in the stock market. With her shrewd instincts and the help of businessmen, she soon becomes as rich as a robber baron.

With her massive fortune—spread over twenty-nine banks to avoid unwelcome notice—Hannah buys a five-story, twenty-five-room mansion on Central Park West and decorates it in gold and the finest decor, inspired by her idol Cleopatra. Then, fate takes a dark turn. A murder and a case of mistaken identity bring the police to the Great Mrs. Elias’s door, turning her world upside-down. When the truth of her life is eventually uncovered, Hannah is ruined. Hounded by the salacious press, the very private Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, ensnared in a scandalous trial and accused of stealing her fortune.

Based on a true story, packed with glamour, suspense, drama, and real-life luminaries, The Great Mrs. Elias is the mesmerizing tale of a daring and mysterious woman, her dangerous secrets, the fortune she built, her precipitous fall, and the age she so gloriously and tragically embodied.