Mary Robinette Kowal makes good use of the historical “year without a summer” in the third book of her Glamourist Histories. As Britain remains locked in winter’s grip, Jane and her husband Vincent are in London to work on a glamour commission for Lord Stratton, an Irish peer. Hearing that her sister Melody is melancholic and realizing there are few marriageable men near home, the Vincents invite Melody to stay with them. Melody’s growing affection for Stratton’s son, Mr. O’Brien, is complicated by Jane’s suspicions of the young man, and by the public’s growing belief that coldmongers are responsible for the unseasonable weather. Meanwhile, Jane and Vincent must contend with his father’s relentless cruelty and ambition, as well as a shadowy plot that threatens O’Brien, the young coldmongers, Jane and Vincent’s very lives, and even the British government itself.
