Meet the keeper of Melbourne's most famous brothel. Female pest, entreprenuer and jilted lover, Caroline Hodgson is Madame Brussels - Melbourne's queen of harlotry.

L. M. Robinson charts her story through the decadent 1880s and the tumultuous 1890s, through courtroom dramas, love affairs and a war between heaven and hell. Operating on the margins of nineteenth-century Melbourne, Madame Brussels was inextricably linked to its centre.

Madame Brussels is a story of independence, love and the war between heaven and hell.