The Scarlet Pimpernel

In 1792, while the guillotine works in Paris, a band of English gentlemen smuggles French aristocrats out of the city under the noses of the revolutionaries, led by a hero known only by his sign, a small red flower. In London the beautiful Marguerite Blakeney, married to the foppish and apparently brainless Sir Percy, is forced by the French agent Chauvelin to help him unmask the Pimpernel in order to save her brother, and she discovers, almost too late, whom she has betrayed.

Baroness Orczy, born in Hungary and raised in London, first had success with the story as a play in 1903 and published the novel in 1905; her hero with a secret identity was the model for many masked heroes after him. Karen Savage reads it alone, in under eight hours.