Praise for Stephen Hunt:

‘Hunt’s imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers. This is Philip Pullman with a dose of benzedrine. Hold on to your hat and let yourself get carried away.’ Tom Holt

'A ripping yarn … the story pounds along … constant inventiveness keeps the reader hooked … the finale is a cracking succession of cliffhangers and surprise comebacks. Great fun' SFX

'An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels' Lisa Tuttle, The Times

'The characters are convincing and colourful, but the real achievement is the setting, a hellish take on Victorian London … the depth and complexity of Hunt's vision makes it compulsive reading for all ages' Guardian

'Wonderfully assured … Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension' Time Out

A secret grave enough to kill for…

The isolated island of Jago, encircled by the magma ocean of the Fire Sea, faces an uncertain future as its inhabitants emigrate to greener climes, leaving the basalt plains and raging steam storms far behind them…

Jago is the only home Hannah Conquest has ever known. But her carefree existence comes to an abrupt halt when her guardian, Archbishop Alice Grey, is brutally murdered.

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 head was separated from her neck.

But it soon becomes clear that there is more at stake than the life of one orphan, for a deadly power struggle is brewing on Jago. And it's beginning to look as if the deaths of Hannah's archaeologist parents shortly after her birth were very far from accidental either.

As she digs deeper into the mystery, assisted by two rather different detectives, Hannah must race to unravel a chain of ancient riddles in order to save not just her own life, but her island home itself…