Bestselling author Lisa Kleypas on her first novel in five years, "Queen of Lombard Street"
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Readers have gone five years without a new novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Kleypas. Now the wait is over. Mary Calvi talked to Kleypas about her new book "Queen of Lombard Street." You can listen to their entire conversation on the Club Calvi podcast.
"Queen of Lombard Street" is historical fiction set in Victorian London where a female economist is determined to open a bank for women, but a mysterious man may to destroy her dreams. Critics are calling the book a delight.
Kleypas told Mary that the reason for her publishing gap was related, in part, to a health issue.
"I had been writing historical romance for so long, for decades," Kleypas explained, "and I was in a very comfortable lane where I knew what I was doing. Then 2020 and COVID came and I had a lot of time to sit and think about where I wanted to go, what I wanted you do next. Around the same time, I was watching TV with my husband and daughter. I reached up and for some reason touched my throat and felt a lump."
It was cancer. Kleypas had successful surgery to remove her thyroid and all of the cancer.
"That really tipped me over the edge where I thought, if I wanna take a risk, if I want to try anything new, then this is the time," Kleypas told Mary.
"Queen of Lombard Street" is about Reina, an economist. Mary remarked that she never heard of a female economists in the late 1800s in England.
"They had different terms for it," Kleypas explained. "But the whole study of economics is of female origin because women started managing households and budgets. Women have always worked with money and the principles of saving and spending wisely. I felt that it really contradicted this myth that women aren't good with money, and men are. That is not true back then or certainly now."
Mary commented on the love story in the book, saying she was rooting for the other guy. But then secrets are revealed and there's a big twist in the middle of the book.
Kleypas desribed an historical detail she used as a basis for part of the story.
"[Reina] hires a staff of early-release prisoners from Milbank Prison, which is nearby. It had these programs where they would try to place these prisoners who needed a new chance, a new start, in situations where they could work as servants, as footmen, and coachmen. The female inmates could be hired maybe as housemaids. But she discovers at some point in the book that her butler, who is kind of good looking and kind of younger than one would expect, that he's an undercover detective and he's investigating her mentor for possible financial crime."
Mary asked Kleypas if she enjoyed writing the book as it is very different from her previous novels.
"Yes," Kleypas answered, "but it was a bit scary because it is a hybrid novel in that there is a very strong romance in there, but it is much larger book than that. The point is not whether or not they get together, but her dream of opening this women's bank and the whole plot with the paroled convicts. I wondered if it would be a good mix, if people would be able to receive it well. And to my delight, it seems to be going very well so far."
You can read a excerpt from "Queen of Lombard Street" below.
Club Calvi books may contain adult themes.
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"Queen of Lombard Street" by Lisa Kleypas
From the publisher: In Victorian England, no woman—not even a brilliant economist like Reina Martin—is allowed to open her own bank account. Men will take care of everything, women are told. But Reina knows better. As the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish immigrant mother, she's haunted by the memory of living with unpaid grocer's bills and no coal for the hearth.
So together with her mentor, the powerful banker William Farlow, Reina will build the first all-women's bank, where women can manage their own financial security.
At home, Reina's domestic staff of recently paroled prisoners are building new lives and becoming a found family. But soon Reina is shocked to discover that her enigmatic butler, John Pembroke, is an undercover police detective. He's been assigned to investigate Farlow, who's suspected of financial crime on a scale so massive, it could destabilize the British economy. Pembroke needs Reina's expertise for a high-stakes nighttime heist to obtain incriminating evidence.
Now Reina faces the agonizing choice of betraying her mentor or turning her back on thousands of working-class families who stand to lose everything. Either way, her dream of the women's bank may be over.
But courage and sacrifice aren't limited to the battlefield—they also occur at the kitchen table, where women who believe in compassion and community are working to remake the future. And when the stakes are highest, Reina knows to trust her heart as well as her intellect.
Lisa Kleypas lives in California.
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Excerpt: "Queen of Lombard Street" by Lisa Kleypas
Chapter One
A Bustle in the Bank
"But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames." —E. M. Forster, Howards End
London, 1877
Reina had been waiting on a hard little chair for the better part of an hour, watching the activity in the banking hall of Farlow's Mayfair branch. Her bottom was numb, her legs and feet prickling. Now and then she wiggled her toes inside her ankle boots to keep them from falling asleep.
She would have liked to lean back, but the mass of her bustle took up most of the chair and obliged her to perch on the front edge.
The wire cage stuffed with horsehair was tied beneath the skirts to en-large a woman's backside to absurd dimensions. Walking with it bouncing and bumping behind was like being harassed by an amorous sofa cushion. Nevertheless, the style was inescapable. Even girls of eleven or twelve could be seen lugging elevated humps behind them, like small unhappy camels.
Reina and the bank's other female customers had been corralled into a waiting area at the back, partitioned off by a waist-high wall. Now and then an attendant came to escort one of the women to a designated cashier. Once her business was concluded, the attendant would accompany her to an exit before he went to fetch the next woman.
"Why can't we walk up to the cashier without an escort?" Reina wondered aloud, mystified by the time-consuming process.
An elderly woman sitting next to her, who was discreetly trying to re-anchor a tiny velvet hat amid the cottony swirls of her hair, replied with an ironic smile. "If we had no gentleman to lead us, my dear, we might become lost in this great big room."
Reina smiled back at her. "Are you a regular customer?"
The woman nodded, still poking about with the hatpin. "My husband opened an account for me."
"How nice," Reina said sincerely.
"Yes, I do like the independence of it. Although one feels rather like an exhibit at the zoo, having to wait behind this little wall."
Reina let out a huff of laughter and reached to help her with the hatpin. "May I?"
"Thank you," came the woman's reply as she leaned forward.
Deftly, Reina maneuvered the tip of the long pin beneath a portion of the soft white hair, and through the other side of the hat. "Is the wait always this long, then?" she asked, capping the pin with care.
"Usually longer."
"Bother. I don't see why we can't stand in line."
"I was told that ladies, not being naturally business-minded, would slow everything down with all our mistakes and questions."
"Would we? I've been watching the cashier lines for nearly an hour, and the ladies seem to be much quicker than the men. As for being business-minded—that's a skill any of us could learn."
"Dear me. You're not one of those modern women, are you?" Reina tilted her head a little to the side. "Modern in what way?" "Wanting equality and so forth."
"I certainly wouldn't mind having equal access to bank cashiers," Reina said dryly.
The older woman's shoulders hitched in a resigned shrug. "Men's time is more valuable, I suppose."
"Oh, I don't know . . . it depends on how you determine the worth of something. People started using gold for currency because it was scarce, reliable, and useful. By those measures, women's time is even more valuable than gold." Reina winked as she added in a conspiratorial whisper, "That's why everyone wants to steal it."
They laughed quietly together.
An attendant came to the partition. He was gangly and a bit spotty, with the slightly underbaked look of a man barely past the age of twenty. Clearly, he longed to be doing anything other than shepherding women through the bank.
"Your turn, miss," he managed to say, stifling a yawn.
Reina stood and adjusted her skirts, tucked a leather document wallet beneath her arm, and went with him into the main hall.
"I'd like to meet with a receiving cashier, please," she said.
"Er...... no, miss. What you want is the paying cashier, for withdrawals."
"Thank you, but I'm not here to make a withdrawal. I want to open an account."
The attendant stopped and turned to face her. "You need a man for that." "No, I don't."
He gave her a long-suffering glance. "I'll show you to the manager. This way, please."
Reina followed him past the lines of gentlemen at the cashiers' counters, all turning to stare like a flock of crows noticing a lone pigeon in their midst. The attendant led her to a massive mahogany desk set on pedestals of graduating drawers, where the assistant manager sat. He stood as they approached.
Reina knew at a glance that any attempt to open an account was already doomed. He was a pleasant-looking man, aged forty or thereabouts, and meticulously dressed in an old-fashioned, high-buttoned morning coat of black wool. The trousers were patterned in a small-scale dogtooth check. All of it was accessorized with silver spectacles and a fat silver watch chain. It was the uniform of bureaucratic orthodoxy.
Even if this man were sympathetic to her situation, precedent and pro-cedure would be adhered to. He would be as reliable a gatekeeper as the mythological Heimdall standing guard over Asgard.
And Reina was exactly the kind of customer the rules were intended to keep out.
Still, that wouldn't stop her from trying.
From QUEEN OF LOMBARD STREET by Lisa Kleypas. Copyright © 2026 by Lisa Kleypas. Reprinted by permission of Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.