{"product_id":"2940046196986","title":"Deception (The Eternal Dungeon: Transformation #1)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Weldon could not remember the last time he had met a prisoner who seemed delighted to be questioned by him.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe thought she had come to change his workplace. He found she was there to change his life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStill pained by the loss of an old love, Weldon Chapman has his life complicated by an order to question a prisoner with a mysterious past. That she is also a discerning woman seems unimportant at first. Having worked for many years in a prison where he is forbidden to marry, Weldon has long since reconciled himself to the fact that his relations with female prisoners must remain strictly professional.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Weldon is about to learn that his own past is as much a mystery as his prisoner's . . . and that his prisoner holds the key which will open the door to that mystery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis novella (short novel) of heterosexual love, gay male love, and a love that's never whispered can be read on its own or as the first story in the \"Transformation\" volume of The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEXCERPT\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Mistress . . .\" He hesitated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Birdesmond,\" she supplied.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"I thought you might prefer to be referred to as Mistress Manx.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe smiled again. \"I would if I were a man. But as you can see, I am a woman.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Mm.\" Weldon tried not to let his eye roam; he had learned long ago that this made female prisoners understandably nervous.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving deliberately avoided the portion of Birdesmond Manx's records that gave her personal information, such as her date of birth, he had drawn two competing images in his mind of what she would look like. One image was of a scrawny girl, still at the age of sexlessness and confusion over what it means to be a woman. The other image, more sinister, had been of a mannish spinster, loud and aggressive, demanding to be called by her family name as though she were a man, and undoubtedly wearing bloomers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe prisoner before him fit neither of these images. She was a soft-spoken, attractive woman in her early thirties, with her hair swept onto her head in a manner that emphasized rather than detracted from her femininity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving told her tale in the briefest manner possible, she added, \"I wanted very much to find a way to help other men who had been arrested. But the officials at Parkside Prison would not permit me to work with the prisoners. Even if they had, I doubt that the workers there could have taught me anything more than I had figured out on my own.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"And then you learned that such training was offered to those of us in the Eternal Dungeon,\" said Weldon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe smiled, saying nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"And committed a crime of your own,\" he added.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer smile did not waver; she nodded. \"A most terrible crime.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dusk Peterson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47177110257904,"sku":"2940046196986","price":3.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940046196986_p0.jpg?v=1763689881","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940046196986","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}