'Roald Dahl by way of Charles Dickens' - Vox.com The Iremongers have taken up what was not wanted and wanted it. Clod is an Iremonger. He lives in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items collected from all over London. At the centre is Heap House, a puzzle of houses, castles, homes and mysteries reclaimed from the city and built into a living maze of staircases and scurrying rats. The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, but Clod has an illness. He can hear the objects whispering. His birth object, a universal bath plug, says 'James Henry', Cousin Tummis's tap is squeaking 'Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson' and something in the attic is shouting 'Robert Burrington' and it sounds angry. A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy Pennant, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes. The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.

 

This book features in the following series: Iremonger Series, The Iremonger Trilogy .

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

There are 416 pages in this book. This book was published 2014 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.