In the summer of 2017, I went to London with my best friend Andie.
I was fresh out of grad school with no money. She was a journalist with no money. We bought Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches and ate them in parks. We shared a pitcher of Pimm’s on the Thames and wandered back to our mildewy Air BnB. It was glorious.
Andie had studied abroad there for a year in college and knew her way around. She crafted a forced-march itinerary of the usual touristy stuff (Big Ben, the Tower of London, the British Museum) – and a Jack the Ripper tour of Whitechapel.
She talked the Jack the Ripper bit up in a big way. When she had taken the tour six years ago, the guide wore a full costume – top hat, cape, rubber knife – and crept up behind the poor tourists to shout things like, “this is where he slaughtered them!”
I couldn’t wait.
Smash-cut to our tour guide: a palpably embarrassed history graduate student with a knee brace (as a freshly-minted physical therapist, I analyzed his gait; meniscus tear?) who hobbled from murder site to murder site and said things like “this next part’s a bit grubby” and “you have to understand that the conditions were so terrible for these women…truly…their lives were dismal…I’m going to tell you what happened very quietly because there are children playing over there and I don’t want them to hear…”
It’s important to know that most the Whitechapel murder sites have been bulldozed to make way for parking structures and playgrounds. In our guide’s defense, it was hard to get that tingling-down-your-neck sensation while watching a gaggle of eight-year-olds play tether ball. But some of the row houses and courtyards still exist. And in those few remaining relics of Victorian London’s poorest neighborhood, it’s easy to imagine the foggy nights, the narrow streets, the sound of footsteps behind you. In our graduate student’s reluctant voice, the emphasis of the tour shifted from mysterious, larger-than-life Jack to the five women he killed.
They lived in a hellish cycle of pregnancy, loss, poverty, and alcoholism. Although the newspaper labeled them prostitutes, there is only evidence that two of the five ever engaged in sex work. All but one was in her forties. Most of them were killed while sleeping on the street. They were not only victims of a psychopath with a knife: they were victims of a system that ground them down beneath its wheels because they had the misfortune to be born poor and female.
At the end of the tour, Andie and I were the embarrassed ones. Embarrassed for the blood-thirsty impulse that led us to sign up. Embarrassed for the world’s continued fascination with a man who murdered women while they slept. We slunk back toward the tube station with our tails between our legs.
In the years that followed, I thought often of that tour. Of the feeling that clenched my stomach when I looked around at the other eager faces and realized that we were all part of the problem. That we had fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the shared belief that these women, somehow, deserved what happened to them. A question wriggled in the back of my mind: what is it about Jack the Ripper that continues to fascinate us?
In THE WHITECHAPEL FULL MOON SOCIETY, Caroline Foster arrives at the door of a men’s boarding house, penniless and desperate, in search of her missing brother. But Charlie is not there, and London is bubbling with the news of Jack the Ripper’s latest kill. In exchange for room and board, she agrees to work as a maid and begins piecing together the details of her brother’s disappearance while Jack the Ripper strikes closer and closer. It’s a story about family, friendship, and discovering your inner strength. It’s a twisty thriller with heart. Kate Quinn called it “a howling good time.” Kristen Harmel called it “a wonderfully unputdownable read.” My mother keeps calling it “the vampire book” – spoiler: no vampires!
I do hope you so enjoy!
Xx
Elizabeth DeLozier
Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
A Novel
Set in Victorian London during Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror, this gripping, original novel is perfect for fans of V. E. Schwab, Dana Schwartz, and Sarah Penner.
When Caroline Foster arrives at the Whitechapel Full Moon Society in search of her missing brother, she finds a dilapidated façade belying an interior as opulent as any exclusive gentlemen’s club. In exchange for room and board, Caroline is hired as the Full Moon’s maid, where she is given three orders: don’t ask personal questions, stay out of the iron-barred room on the second floor, and remain in her bedroom from sunup to sundown on the full moon.
But when it is revealed that the previous maid was murdered—an early victim of Jack the Ripper—and her brother has left behind no answers, only more questions, Caroline begins to suspect her hosts might be hiding something. As more bodies turn up with a connection to the Society, Caroline fears she may have unwittingly stumbled into a bedtime story, the kind with monsters and curses, family secrets and ancient lore.
Tantalizing and pulsing, Elizabeth DeLozier’s sophomore novel gives an exciting alternative look into the infamous Jack the Ripper story with a major, supernatural twist.
Fantasy | Thriller Historical [ Dutton, On Sale: August 25, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9798217045259 / eISBN: 9798217045273 ]
Elizabeth DeLozier holds a BA in Spanish literature, a BS in biological anthropology, and a doctorate in physical therapy. An avid traveler, animal lover, and history nerd, she lives in Southern California with her husband, twin sons, and rescue dogs. Eleanore of Avignon is her debut novel.
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