A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Rise of the Iron Moon.

The isolated island of Jago is the only place Hannah Conquest has ever known as home. Encircled by the magma ocean of the Fire Sea, it was once the last bastion of freedom when the world struggled under the tyranny of the Chimecan Empire during the age-long winter of the cold-time.

But now this once-shining jewel of civilization faces an uncertain future as its inhabitants emigrate to greener climes, leaving the basalt plains and raging steam storms far behind them.For Hannah and her few friends, the streets of the island's last occupied underground city form a vast, near-deserted playground. But Hannah's carefree existence comes to an abrupt halt when her guardian, Archbishop Alice Gray, is brutally murdered in her own cathedral.

Someone desperately wants to suppress a secret kept by the archbishop, and if the attempts on Hannah's own life are any indication, the killer believes that Alice passed the knowledge of it onto her ward before her saintly head was separated from her neck.

But it soon becomes clear that there is more at stake than the life of one orphan. A deadly power struggle is brewing on Jago, involving rival factions in the senate and the island's most powerful trading partner. And it's beginning to look as if the deaths of Hannah's archaeologist parents shortly after her birth were very far from accidental.

Soon the race is on for Hannah and her friends to unravel a chain of hidden riddles and follow them back to their source to save not just her own life, but her island home itself.

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How can one plucky orphan girl save the world from destruction?

Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, lonely orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her mysterious rescuer claims to have escaped from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals, just as they conquered his own nation.

Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals' neighbours of the murderous Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweeping all before them.But there's more to Purity Drake than meets the eye.

And as Jackals girds itself for war against an army of near-indestructible beasts serving an ancient evil with a terrible secret, it soon becomes clear that the Kingdom's only hope is a strange little orphan girl and the last, desperate plan of an escaped slave from a land, far, far away...

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Stephen Hunt's The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

A hugely engaging adventure set in a Victorian-style world - a fantastical version of Dickens - that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman.

Professor Amelia Harsh is obsessed with finding the lost civilization of Camlantis, a legendary city from pre-history that is said to have conquered hunger, war and disease with the creation of a perfect pacifist society.

But when she returns home to Jackals from her latest archaeological misadventure she finds that the university council has stripped her of her position in retaliation for her heretical research.

Without official funding, Amelia has no choice but to accept the offer of patronage from the man she blames for her father's bankruptcy and suicide, the fiercely intelligent Abraham Quest. He has found evidence that suggests the Camlantean ruins are buried under one of the sea-like lakes that dot the murderous jungles of Liongeli.

Amelia undertakes an expedition deep into the dark heart of the jungle, blackmailing her old friend Commodore Black into ferrying her across the huge river of the Shedarkshe in his ancient u-boat.

With an untrustworthy crew of freed convicts, Quest's force of fiercesome female mercenaries on board and a lunatic steamman safari hunter acting as their guide, Amelia's luck seems to be going from bad to worse. And she's as yet unaware that her quest for the perfect society is about to bring her own world to the brink of destruction...

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A hugely engaging adventure set in a Victorian-style world - a fantastical version of Dickens - that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman.

Two orphans are more than they seem. And one megalomaniac will stop at nothing to find them...

When Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has just been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to return to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was in fact the real target of the attack.

For Molly carries a secret deep in her blood, a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Soon Molly will find herself battling a grave threat to civilization which draws on an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago.

Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered life in the home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life. He is accompanied by Harry Stave, an agent of the Court of the Air - a shadowy organization independent of the government that acts as the final judiciary of the land, ensuring that order prevails.

Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life, but which may also offer him the power to avert the coming catastrophe.

Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but Molly and Oliver are joined by indomitable friends in this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue and adventure.


Download the first chapter free: [link]

Amazon: [link]

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