The novel “The Opal Serpent.” Victorian England. Paul Bycott, the only heir of a provincial aristocrat, can’t stand his father’s tyranny and, wanting to gain fame in the literary world, goes to London. Enraged, his father refuses to provide financial support, and Paul leads a modest life as a budding writer—yet it doesn’t stop him from falling desperately in love with the owner’s daughter of a secondhand bookshop. The plot takes an unexpected and dangerous turn when Paul’s mother secretly sends him a golden Indian brooch shaped like a serpent, set with opals and diamonds. The brooch turns out to be the key to the mysterious and dark past of the bookseller, whom he tried to run from for more than twenty years…