"Anyone suffering Downton Abbey withdrawal symptoms (who isn't?) will find an instant tonic in Daisy Goodwin’s The American Heiress. The story of Cora Cash, an American heiress in the 1890s who bags an English duke, this is a deliciously evocative first novel that lingers in the mind." --Allison Pearson, New York Times bestselling author of I Don’t Know How She Does It and I Think I Love You

"For daughters of the new American billionaires of the 19th century, it was the ultimate deal: marriage to a cash-strapped British Aristocrat in return for a title and social status. But money didn’t always buy them happiness." —DAISY GOODWIN IN THE DAILY MAIL

Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England.

In "The Duchess’s Tattoo", Cora Cash is desperate to be a fashionable lady of society. Despite her title and her wealth, she finds that English society is not that welcoming to "The American Duchess." When Cora spies a distinctive snake tattoo on her mother-in-law’s wrist, she decides that she must have one as well.

It is up to the talented tattoo artist to save "The American Duchess" from herself.

In addition to the short story, "The Duchess Tattoo", this also contains a letter from the author, Daisy Goodwin, on writing THE AMERICAN HEIRESS, an excerpt from "Titled Americans", an authentic quarterly publication from 1890 which listed all of the eligible titled bachelors still on the market, and an excerpt from AN AMERICAN HEIRESS, a moving and brilliantly entertaining debut novel coming from St. Martin’s Press in June.

< DAISY GOODWIN, a Harkness scholar who attended Columbia University’s film school after earning a degree in history at Cambridge University, is a leading television producer in the U.K. Her poetry anthologies, including 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, have introduced many new readers to the pleasures of poetry, and she was Chair of the judging panel of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, an ABC TV executive, have two daughters and live in London. The American Heiress is her first novel.

< THE DUCHESS’S TATTOO (Begin Reading)

“The Duchess’s Tattoo”by Daisy Goodwin, author of The American Heiress

London 1895

Mr. Palmer was working on the thirty pieces of silver when the bell rang. He was experimenting with a shade of mauve that gave the blood money just the right tinge. It was his subtle palette that made him the choice of the discerning customer, that and the artistry of his designs which paid for these premises in fashionable Bond Street, a long way from the back room in Cable Street where he had started out, inking the names of sweethearts onto the brawny biceps of sailors. Palmer dared to hope that one day his art would be considered sufficiently respectable to allow him to display a royal warrant. He was, after all, as entitled to one as Asprey’s the jewellers next door. Hadn’t he practiced his craft on His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and his son the Duke of York? He had even worked for the Duchess of York, although he doubted whether he would ever be allowed to display her coat of arms.

“There’s someone here to see you, sir.” Betty’s voice interrupted his thoughts. A lady,” she added in a whisper.

Palmer put down his needle. “We’ll finish this later, Sam. Another hour or two should do it.”

Sam got up from the table, where he had been lying face down, and stretched out his massive shoulders. Christ and his disciples were ranged across his back, from Doubting Thomas on the right shoulder to Judas on the left. The Son of God was blessing the bread and wine somewhere to the left of Sam’s spine.

It was Palmer’s most magnificent piece yet. He was going to display it at the Paris Exhibition, along with his depiction of M. Eiffel’s extraordinary tower, which stretched up the back of the sailor’s right calf.

The tattooist pushed back the heavy velvet portiere that hung over the door to his studio and went into the small waiting room. He saw at once that Betty had been correct in describing his visitor as “a lady.” Although most of his female visitors were well dressed, there was often a touch of gaudiness that betrayed their humble origins. But this woman was the real thing. She was wearing a navy blue costume trimmed with sable, and a neat round hat with a veil. She was so impeccably turned out that Palmer wondered whether she might be foreign, French perhaps. English ladies, in his ex Read Less