When Ludlow Fitch's parents cruelly betray him, he steals away on the back of a carriage and leaves behind the stinking City. He arrives in the dead of night at a remote village, where he crosses paths with the tall and limping figure of Joe Zabbidou - a pawnbroker with a difference. For Joe trades secrets, not goods, for cash.

Ludlow is employed to record the villagers' fiendish confessions in The Black Book of Secrets. Bodysnatching; thievery; murder. The people of Pagus Parvus have much to hide. But is Ludlow Fitch ready to release his own skeletons? And will he ever learn to trust his mysterious master?

This book features in the following series: Tales From a Sinister City, Tales From the Sinister City .

There are 336 pages in this book. This book was published 2010 by Pan Macmillan .

F. E. Higgins was born in England but raised in Ireland. She lives and writes in a house that dates back to the fifteenth century, in a small village in rural Kent.