19th Century London in all its weird and grimy glory. Reality is peeling slowly away like an old circus fly-poster. The clock is ticking towards the City's doom, but it will come in a stranger guise than you, in your wildest literary fever dreams, could ever conceive of . . .

Enter, if you dare, the puzzle-box story of Victorian magician-detective Edward Moon and his silent side-kick the Somnambulist. Follow them as they spiral deep into a world of secret societies, a travelling circus and a pair of the most horrifying agents of chaos ever to wear school uniform. Can Edward defeat his own ghosts and solve the riddle at the dark heart of this extraordinary story?

From the inkwell of master storyteller Jonathan Barnes comes an utterly unique tale of Empire-shaking conspiracy, poetry and madness.