Precocious ten-year-old Vanessa Dudley-Morris knows lots of secrets. In 1949 when she and her family are forced to move into two rooms on the second floor of 519 Jarvis Street in Toronto, a genteel but somewhat rundown rooming house owned by a reclusive pianist, she learns a lot more. Despite the family's drastically reduced circumstances, her parents struggle to keep up their old standards. Threatened by blindness due to an eye condition, Vanessa is kept at home, tutored by an erratic succession of eccentrics, some with questionable credentials. Consequently, she spends a lot of time alone, wandering the dim corridors of the old house, silently listening at doors and watching the odd characters who live there. She becomes fascinated by a mother and son who move into a room on the third floor. Eventually she agrees to take secret notes from the son to his mysterious friend at her church, unwittingly unleashing a chain of events that leads to tragedy.

While on tour to the mysterious planet Abulon, the pleasure-loving hermaphrodites of the Merculian National Dance Company are intrigued by the virile patriarchal society they discover there. The natives seem friendly enough, but when the star's young lover is kidnapped, the Merculians find themselves plunged into an alien civil war that they are ill-equipped to survive.QUOTES/REVIEWS"Caro Soles has written a crackerjack SF novel — moving, eloquent, and richly textured. I recommend it highly."Robert J. SawyerNebula and Hugo Award-winner"THE ABULON DANCE is an intricate and fast-paced novel of political intrigue and clashing alien cultures. The characterizations are rich, detailed, and subtle, the action engrossing. I finished it in a single sitting."Robin Wayne BaileyAuthor of the Shadowdance and the Brothers of the Dragon series