Violet Merriweather first sets eyes on Colonel Winston when he purchases her at auction from Witherspoon Academy, the orphanage where she'd been raised. Dutifully, as she was taught, Violet pushes away her fear of the monstrous, forbidding Thornfield Abbey, and throws herself into her work as governess to the colonel's youngest son.

It's his elder sons, one a cordial scientist and one a midnight rogue, that tempt her as they battle for her affections. Affections she can ill afford for either of them if she wants to keep her employment.

But something is preying on the women of New Geneva, something that threatens to unleash the ghosts of Thornfield and drag them all into hell. And that something wants Violet most of all.

Ours is Just a Little Sorrow is a retro-futuristic Victorian Gothic Romance. A love letter to Mary Shelley's The Modern Prometheus and Victoria Holt's entire career. Plus steampunk, just because.