Richard Larkin, fifteen-year-old orphan from Philadelphia, thought his luck had changed when the famous literary figure Samuel Johnson found him work at an "eating house," called the Seven Stars. As a Colonial, ignorant of the secret Jacobite movement to dethrone King George II, Richard was puzzled by the guarded political conversations at the tavern. Then one night, while serving a gathering of aristocratic men clad in silks and satins, he overhears a dark plot, coded with mysterious names and allusions - and witnesses the cold-blooded murder of the one dissenting voice. The story moves on, as swiftly and as deftly as the spies and counter-spies who hunt Richard down, involving him deeper and deeper in their dangerous and separate causes. Samuel Johnson, William Hogarth and David Garrick come alive in flesh and blood terms as Richard moves in and out of the intrigues of the famous Elibank Plot of 1752. Re-created in full costume, are the lords and ladies, the street urchins, the men of art and letters, who peopled the flowering of the Age of Reason. With cloak-and-dagger overtones, a history adventure that is vivid, authentic, and hard to put down.