Kathleen Marple Kalb: A Fatal Waltz
Ella Shane #5
A Fatal Waltz is the fifth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb’s wonderful series about opera singer Ella Shane, set in Gilded Age New York. Ella, a mezzo-soprano who specializes in singing male roles, and is an expert swordswoman, grew up in a tenement. She is the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father, who both died when she was a child, and she practices both faiths, lighting Shabbat candles on Friday nights and going to Mass on Sundays. After a famous opera singer took her under her wing, Ella went on to have a very successful career, and by now she has overcome the poverty of her childhood, but she has never forgotten it, or the people who were kind to her.