<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class=MsoNormal><I>His Last Fire</I> is historical fiction with a contemporary feel, meticulously researched, bursting with a rich and arcane vocabulary, and written in an engaging present. A stunning new voice emerges with these strange and gem-like stories that are a riot through the revolutionary alehouses, printshops, and pleasure-houses of late 18th-century London. Meet Jack Cockshutt, arsonist by trade, returning to rescue his victims and profit from their relief, finding the woman who just might save him. Meet the beauty who castigates her customers with passages from Paine’s <I>Rights of Man</I>; the boy who raises the tricolor on the White Tower; the famous comic actor with his self-destructive craving for eel pies; and the laborer contracted to spend seven years locked up beneath a dilettante’s country house. Meet Lappish women and glimpse into the picnic party of the Ottoman ambassador.