'Roald Dahl by way of Charles Dickens' - Vox.com 'Dark and wildly original urban fantasy tale' - The New York Times 'Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical, everything that a novel for children should be' - Eleanor Catton, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2013 'A rare work of individual brilliance' - Inis magazine 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.

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 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.