Los Angeles, 1991. Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls, one of the makers of the modern world, is murdered in broad daylight on his illegitimate daughter India's doorstep, slaughtered by a knife wielded by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown. The dead man is a charismatic World War Two Resistance hero, a man of formidable intellectual ability, a former US ambassador to India and subsequently America's counter-terrorism...

After an assassination attempt, Sage and her fiancé attempt to undercover who the traitor is and work to avoid a war with another country.

Leah Frothen has spent five years in self-imposed exile, recovering from a failed relationship and hating herself for abandoning her baby daughter. Now she's back in Welce, determined to find her place in society and learn to be a mother. When the regent asks her to spy on mysterious ambassadors from a visiting nation, Leah finds herself developing a dangerous friendship with an unscrupulous foreign woman and falling in love with a man she's not even...