Abe Pearl­man and Mitzy Singer have a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry. Abe has a long-sim­mer­ing crush on Mitzy, and she tol­er­ates his pres­ence after they worked togeth­er on a project.

Accord­ing to his guid­ance coun­selor, Abe is a lon­er and, accord­ing to his mom, he is not ath­let­ic enough. When he sees a sign that offers ​“For­tunes and Futures” for eight dol­lars and walks into a for­tune teller’s booth, he fig­ures he doesn’t have much to lose. The for­tune teller informs him that she has both good news and bad news to share with him. The bad news is that some­one will die. The good news is that Abe might be able to pre­vent a death.

Not real­ly that enam­ored with this for­tune teller and the for­tune he no longer wants, Abe starts to leave. He turns the door knob and is sud­den­ly trans­port­ed to late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land. His name is now Ash­er rather than Abe, and he sells jew­el­ry in the Whitechapel sec­tion of Lon­don, where the Jack the Rip­per roams.

What fol­lows is an adven­ture and mys­tery sto­ry where Abe (now Ash­er) and Mitzy (now Maya, who also man­aged to land her­self in the same predica­ment) have to fig­ure out the con­nec­tion between the for­tune teller’s prophe­cy and the Jack the Rip­per mur­ders, how this affects Abe, and how to nav­i­gate extreme­ly treach­er­ous waters to get back home.

This engross­ing and well-paced read is per­fect for those who love a com­bi­na­tion of his­to­ry and mys­tery. Filled with his­tor­i­cal con­text, the sto­ry cen­ters on both Abe and Mitzy as they nav­i­gate new, often unwel­com­ing, and some­times fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tions. Friend­ship, per­se­cu­tion, sus­pense, and intrigue abound.