The last thing Charles ever wanted to be was a hangman. But he’s the eldest son of Paris’s most dreaded public official, and in the 1750s, after centuries of superstition, people like him are outcasts. He knows that the executioner’s son must become an executioner himself or starve, for all doors are closed to him; although he loathes the role and would much rather study medicine, society’s fears and prejudices will never let him be anything else. And when disaster strikes, family duty demands that Charles take his father’s place much sooner than he had ever imagined.