For the 100th Anniver­sary of the sink­ing of the Titan­ic, and set in the same time peri­od that cap­tured America’s imag­i­na­tion this year in the run­away hit Down­ton Abbey, comes The House of Vel­vet and Glass. Begin­ning onboard the fate­ful voy­age of the famous ocean lin­er, The House of Vel­vet and Glass is the entranc­ing sto­ry of the All­ston fam­i­ly — weav­ing togeth­er past, present, and beyond the grave — that takes place on that infa­mous ship, in colo­nial Shang­hai, and in Boston in the years fol­low­ing the Titanic’s sink­ing, at the turn of a remark­able Amer­i­can cen­tu­ry that saw it rise as a world pow­er. Still reel­ing from the deaths of her moth­er and younger sis­ter on the Titan­ic a few years pri­or, Sibyl All­ston turns to the occult, seek­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with her lost rel­a­tives through a local medi­um. Her days of qui­et grief and spin­ster­hood (she is, after all, 27 years old) are dis­rupt­ed by the unex­pect­ed return to Boston of her broth­er under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances, as well as the reap­pear­ance of Ben­ton Der­by, the man who Sibyl once loved — and might still. Soon, Sibyl and Ben­ton are drawn into a hunt to solve a mys­tery and uncov­er a shock­ing truth about her fam­i­ly and her father’s past — a truth with a hor­ri­fy­ing con­nec­tion to the sink­ing of the Titanic.