In the ruins of Winchester Palace, a church outreach worker is found dead, his tattooed skin flayed from his arms.
Ex-detective Jamie Brooke, now a struggling private investigator in Southwark, is drawn into the case by the disappearance of a friend, while a candidate for Mayor rises on a promise to clean up the city.
As evictions, arson and beatings close in on the borough's outcasts, Jamie and Blake must expose a collector whose respectability is the perfect mask, before the community that saved her is erased.
London's next Mayor wants a cleaner city. Jamie Brooke knows what happens to the people he cleans away.
Available in ebook, paperback, hardback, large print and audiobook. Buying direct supports the author most, and ships worldwide.
The research behind the book
Cross Bones Graveyard
The real shrine to the Outcast Dead in Southwark, and the memorial garden the novel foresaw.
Learn more →The Winchester Geese
Sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester for four centuries, denied burial in consecrated ground.
The Southwark Mysteries
John Constable, the real poet-shaman of Cross Bones, whose vigils inspired Magda Raven.
Learn more → InkTattoos as reclamation
The London Tattoo Convention, and marking the path through the fire of life.
Learn more →Books bound in human skin
Anthropodermic bibliopegy: real, rarer than legend, and on the villain's shelf.
The octopus
Jo's real encounter at the Poor Knights Islands, New Zealand, that became O's full-body tattoo.
Learn more →Audiobook available direct from the author and on Audible, Apple, Kobo, Spotify and more.
