* THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * 'An enthralling read' GUARDIAN 'A thrilling blend
of fantasy and horror richly imagined and masterfully executed' SFX 'Terrific . . . A book
that creeps up on you wearing brass knuckles' CONN IGGULDEN _______________ The first in a
captivating new historical fantasy series ORDINARY MONSTERS introduces the Talents with a
catastrophic vision of the Victorian world and the gifted broken children who must save it.
There in the shadows was a figure in a cloak at the bottom of the cobblestone stair and it
turned and stared up at them as still and unmoving as a pillar of darkness but it had no face
only smoke . . . 1882. North of Edinburgh on the edge of an isolated loch lies an
institution of crumbling stone where a strange doctor collects orphans with unusual abilities.
In London two children with such powers are hunted by a figure of darkness - a man made of
smoke. Charlie Ovid discovers a gift for healing himself through a brutal upbringing in
Mississippi while Marlowe a foundling from a railway freight glows with a strange bluish
light. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety they are
confronted by a sinister dangerous force that threatens to upend the world as they know it.
What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London to the lochs of Scotland where
other gifted children - the Talents - have been gathered at Cairndale Institute and the realms
of the dead and the living collide. As secrets within the Institute unfurl Marlowe Charlie
and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities and the nature of the
force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.
_______________ 'A dazzling mountain of wild invention Dickensian eccentrics supernatural
horrors and gripping suspense' JOE HILL 'Expansive in scope and storytelling Ordinary
Monsters builds an electrifying Victorian world' CARI THOMAS J.M. Miro's book 'Ordinary
Monsters' was a #5 Sunday Times bestseller w e 04-06-2022.
