Reveling in his unprecedented literary success, George Gordon, the 6th Lord Byron, is less famous than notorious. His all-too-public affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, the sexually energetic young wife of a rising Tory politician, is the talk of London; so too the nagging rumors of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. With the publication of the first cantos of his masterpiece Don Juan, Byron’s sexual indiscretions, radical politics and hilariously acid verse earn him the enmity of some of England’s most powerful figures, including poet laureate Robert Southey and Foreign Secretary Robert Castlereagh. As the waters of scandal rise, and Byron becomes the unwitting pawn in a vast conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government, England’s most famous and incandescent poet must decide for what – and for whom – he is prepared to make a terrible sacrifice. Set in Seville, London, Constantinople, Ottoman Greece and St. Petersburg during the first decades of the 19th century, The Virtues of Scandal is a thrilling tale of conspiracy, scandal, betrayal and courage. Interlacing three narratives that span more than a decade and include the rousing adventures of Don Juan himself, the novel is rich with historical detail, bringing to life the gifts, flaws and contradictions that number Byron among the greatest of poets and the most confounding of men. The Virtues of Scandal , Richard Abramson's intricately plotted conjuring of Lord Byron's outrageous life and heroic death, landed me feet-first in the tale and didn't jettison me until the last word. Byron, somehow both as real as we are and as exceptional as we are not, made for himself a life that was so original, so wildly engaging, that it hardly seems possible he actually walked among us. His remarkable poetry,together with Abramson's rich and rollicking account of his life, are all the evidence we need. --Lynn Stegner, author of For All the Obvious Reasons " The Virtues of Scandal isa meticulously researched roller-coaster of a novel. I couldn't put itdown!" --Leslie Cannold, author of The Book ofRachael The Virtues of Scandal , Richard Abramson's startlingly ambitious first novel, interlaces three separate but related narratives: Byron in England, famous, charming and courting scandal as assiduously as his contemporaries' wives; in Greece a decade later, at risk from his support of the Greeks' rebellion against the Ottoman Empire; and, a novel-within-a-novel, the action-packed adventures of young Don Juan, the eponymous hero of Byron's famous poem. Set in Seville, London, Constantinople and St. Petersburg, and touching on topics ranging from the geopolitics of the so-called 'Eastern Question' to the bitter resentments among the Romantic poets to the scandals that ultimately drove Byron into exile, this sweeping novel races from crisis to crisis and has something in it for everyone. Richard Abramson was born in New York but has lived most of his adult life in Northern California. Squandering his undergraduate degree in English Literature, he spent thirty-five years practicing law, first as an intellectual property litigator and then as General Counsel of a major scientific research institute. Since retiring in 2015 he has been teaching at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and spending time with his wife Lisa, his sons Jonathan and Michael,and his golden retriever Bear. A longtime reader of Romantic poetry in general and Byron in particular, The Virtues of Scandal is his first novel.