The Illusion of Murder (Nellie Bly)

History, mystery, murder and magic accompany Nellie Bly – Victorian Age detective, reporter, and feminist – as she takes up a challenge by Jules Verne to beat the eighty days it took his fictional hero Phileas Fogg to race around the world. Nellie tackles the journey--alone, with a single change of clothes--against the wishes of her publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, who felt it was “too dangerous for a woman to attempt.” In her official account of the journey, Seventy-Two Days Around the World, Nellie leaves out one riveting event: a mysterious death. In the bustling harbor city of Port Said, she witnesses an event that makes her a target for a killer and involves her in international intrigue with the fate of nations at stake. On board the ships that take Nellie from the Land of the Pharaohs to the exotic Orient and across the Pacific are the most famous magicians in the world... but a killer also stalks the decks. As magicians conjure the fantasy and a spiritualist raises the dead, Nellie wonders if Mr. Pulitzer had underestimated the danger.