'All of Edward Carey's work is profound and delightful' - Max Porter 'Dark and wildly original urban fantasy tale' - The New York Times 'If this were music, Carey would be Eric Satie. If it were film, he would be Tim Burton.' - Newsday 'A rare work of individual brilliance' - Inis magazine Dark, gothic and delightfully macabre, the Iremonger family return... Foulsham, London's great filth repository, is bursting at the seams. The walls that keep the muck in are buckling, rubbish is spilling over the top, back into the city that it came from. In the Iremonger family offices, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger broods: in his misery and fury at the people of London, he has found a way of making everyday objects assume human shape, and turning real people into objects. Abandoned in the depths of the Heaps, Lucy Pennant has been rescued by a terrifying creature, Binadit Iremonger - more animal than human. She is desperate and determined to find Clod. But unbeknownst to her, Clod has become a golden sovereign and is 'lost'. He is being passed as currency from hand to hand all around Foulsham, and yet everywhere people are searching for him, desperate to get hold of this dangerous Iremonger, who, it is believed, has the power to bring the mighty Umbitt down. But all around the city, things, everyday things, are twitching into life...

 

 

This book is part of a book series called The Iremonger Trilogy .

This book has been graded for interest at 13-15 years.

There are 336 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2015 by Hot Key Books .

Edward Carey is a playwright, novelist and illustrator. He has worked for the theatre in London, Lithuania and Romania and with a shadow puppet master in Malaysia. He has written two illustrated novels for adults, OBSERVATORY MANSIONS and ALVA & IRVA, both translated into many different languages. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he wrote the Iremonger Trilogy because he missed feeling cold and gloomy.