Search results for ""Author E. S. Thomson""

London, 1851. Restless and bored after a long hot summer, apothecary and poison expert Jem Flockhart decides to redesign her physic garden. But plans are thrown into confusion when a man's skeleton is unearthed from beneath the deadly nightshade, a smaller, child-like skeleton curled at its feet. The body bears evidence of knife wounds to its ribs and arms, and is accompanied by a collection of macabre objects: a brass bowl, a curious coin-like token, a set of tiny ivory sculls.The police claim the victim is too long-buried for answers to be found, but for Jem, a corpse in her own garden is something that cannot be ignored. The plans to the garden, laid out some forty years earlier, reveal a list of five names.When Jem and Will start asking questions, the murders begin. Each victim has a past connection with the physic garden; each corpse is found with its jaw broken wide and its mouth stuffed with deadly nightshade. As they move closer to uncovering the truth Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain encounter a dark world of addiction, madness, power and death that strikes at the very heart of Jem's own history. This time, the poison is personal.

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''Immersive from the start and satisfying to the finish, a faultless tale from one of our best writers of historical crime fiction'' JESS KIDD In the darkness, her face glimmered like polished bone, white, but with a bluish tinge. Her lips were dry and cracked. I saw them move; a black tongue pass over them as if she was trying to speak, but she made no sound. A plague is coming to London. Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the ''blue death'' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family. With the approach of autumn, no one is safe, for the fog

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A dark and richly atmospheric thriller, perfect for fans of Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions, Sarah Perry's Melmoth and Elly Griffiths' The Stranger Diaries.

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A chilling and atmospheric thriller set in a crumbling Victorian asylum, perfect for fans of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, The Silent Companions and The Strangers Diaries.

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'Superb' Sunday ExpressA gripping and darkly atmospheric thriller set in Victorian London, perfect for fans of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, The Strangers Diaries and The Silent Companions.What secret grips Corvus Hall?Visiting the Great Exhibition to view the wax anatomical models of the famous but reclusive Dr Silas Strangeway, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find a severed hand, perfectly dissected and laid out amongst the exhibits. Assuming it to be a prank by medical students they return it to Dr Strangeway, who works at Corvus Hall, a private anatomy school run by Dr Alexander Crowe - once one of Edinburgh's most revered anatomists. Jem's persistence reveals that a body does indeed lie in the school's mortuary, minus its right hand. The body has no provenance. More macabre still, its face has been dissected making identification impossible.All is not as it should be at Corvus Hall. Dr Crowe's daughter, Lilith, visits the mortuary in the dead of night. Her twin sisters, Sorrow and Silence - one blind and one deaf - exert a malign influence over the students. Organs, freshly dissected, appear in the anatomical museum. Fear grips lecturers and students, even as something unseen binds them in a bloody pact of silence.Praise for E. S. Thomson's novels:'Gothic. Gory. Glorious . . . E. S. Thompson's Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years. Jem is just my kind of heroine: scarred, smart, complex, and unapologetically queer' Kirsty Logan, author of The Gloaming'Love evocative descriptions of Victorian London and brilliant plotting? Then grab a copy of this!' Rebecca Griffiths, author of The Primrose Path'Here's a tale of Victorian London to freeze your blood on a cold winter's night' Evening Telegraph'Jem Flockhart's London is vivid, pungent and perilous' Chris Brookmyre'Complex, harrowing and highly enjoyable' Daily Express'A marvellous, vivid book' Janet Ellis'Jem Flockhart is a marvel . . . This vivid journey into the dark side of the human soul is a thoroughly engrossing tale' Mary Paulson Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker

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'Immersive from the start and satisfying to the finish, a faultless tale from one of our best writers of historical crime fiction' JESS KIDDIn the darkness, her face glimmered like polished bone, white, but with a bluish tinge. Her lips were dry and cracked. I saw them move; a black tongue pass over them as if she was trying to speak, but she made no sound.A plague is coming to London. Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the 'blue death' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family. With the approach of autumn, no one is safe, for the fog brings with it an evil and poisonous sickness - the perfect shroud for murder. When family secrets are prised out into the open, people begin dying. But who, or what, is the cause? Searching for answers, Jem and Will are driven underground, to the passages and tunnels beneath the city's teeming streets. Here, their adversary proves to be more elusive, and more deadly, than ever.PRAISE FOR UNDER GROUND'From the outset every image, every metaphor and simile reflects the central themes of corruption and disease, poverty and decadence.The plot is complex and substantial and the final denouement has a feeling of perfect inevitability' ALIS HAWKINS'I LOVED it. Fantastic characters - I never guessed! So good ... Underground is brilliantly steeped in the lore of Victorian London, i couldn't take my eyes off it!' SARA SHERIDAN'Immersive' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAYPRAISE FOR E.S.THOMSON'Another gripping page-turner, add Nightshade to your reading list now.' Edinburgh Evening News'Vivid, pungent and perilous' CHRIS BROOKMYRE on Beloved Poison'Evocative...brilliant plotting' REBECCA GRIFFITHS on Beloved Poison'A dark gripping atmospheric thriller' Dundee Courier on Nightshade'Superb' Sunday Express'Gothic. Gory. Glorious . . . E. S. Thompson's Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years. Jem is just my kind of heroine: scarred, smart, complex, and unapologetically queer' Kirsty Logan, author of The Gloaming'Love evocative descriptions of Victorian London and brilliant plotting? Then grab a copy of this!' Rebecca Griffiths, author of The Primrose Path'Complex, harrowing and highly enjoyable' Daily Express'A marvellous, vivid book' Janet Ellis'Jem Flockhart is a marvel . . . This vivid journey into the dark side of the human soul is a thoroughly engrossing tale' Mary Paulson Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker

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'Another gripping page-turner, add Nightshade to your reading list now.' Edinburgh Evening News'Vivid, pungent and perilous' CHRIS BROOKMYRE on Beloved Poison'Evocative...brilliant plotting' REBECCA GRIFFITHS on Beloved Poison'A dark gripping atmospheric thriller' Dundee Courier on NightshadeA gripping and darkly atmospheric thriller set in Victorian London, perfect for fans of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, The Strangers Diaries and The Silent Companions.London, 1851. Restless and bored after a long hot summer, apothecary and poison expert Jem Flockhart decides to redesign her physic garden. But plans are thrown into confusion when a man's skeleton is unearthed from beneath the deadly nightshade, a smaller, child-like skeleton curled at its feet. The body bears evidence of knife wounds to its ribs and arms, and is accompanied by a collection of macabre objects: a brass bowl, a curious coin-like token, a set of tiny ivory sculls.The police claim the victim is too long-buried for answers to be found, but for Jem, a corpse in her own garden is something that cannot be ignored. The plans to the garden, laid out some forty years earlier, reveal a list of five names. When Jem and Will start asking questions, the murders begin. Each victim has a past connection with the physic garden; each corpse is found with its jaw broken wide and its mouth stuffed with deadly nightshade. As they move closer to uncovering the truth Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain encounter a dark world of addiction, madness, power and death that strikes at the very heart of Jem's own history. This time, the poison is personal. . . Praise for E. S. Thomson's novels:'Superb' Sunday Express'Gothic. Gory. Glorious . . . E. S. Thompson's Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years. Jem is just my kind of heroine: scarred, smart, complex, and unapologetically queer' Kirsty Logan, author of The Gloaming'Love evocative descriptions of Victorian London and brilliant plotting? Then grab a copy of this!' Rebecca Griffiths, author of The Primrose Path'Here's a tale of Victorian London to freeze your blood on a cold winter's night' Evening Telegraph'Jem Flockhart's London is vivid, pungent and perilous' Chris Brookmyre'Complex, harrowing and highly enjoyable' Daily Express'A marvellous, vivid book' Janet Ellis'Jem Flockhart is a marvel . . . This vivid journey into the dark side of the human soul is a thoroughly engrossing tale' Mary Paulson Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker

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'Vivid, pungent and perilous' CHRIS BROOKMYRE'Evocative...brilliant plotting' REBECCA GRIFFITHSAn intricate and darkly atmospheric thriller set in Victorian London, perfect for readers of Elly Griffiths' The Stranger Diaries, Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions and Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.Summoned to the riverside by the desperate, scribbled note of an old friend, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find themselves on board the seamen's floating hospital, an old hulk known only as The Blood, where prejudice, ambition and murder seethe beneath a veneer of medical respectability. On shore, a young woman, a known prostitute, is found drowned in a derelict boatyard. A man leaps to his death into the Thames, driven mad by poison and fear. The events are linked - but how? Courting danger in the opium dens and brothels of the waterfront, certain that the Blood lies at the heart of the puzzle, Jem and Will embark on a quest to uncover the truth. In a hunt that takes them from the dissecting tables of a private anatomy school to the squalor of the dock-side mortuary, they find themselves involved in a dark and terrible mystery. Praise for E.S. Thomson:'It's rare that a book is Gothic enough for me, but Beloved Poison is killing it. The blood, the bones...' LAURA PURCELL'Complex, harrowing and highly enjoyable' DAILY EXPRESS'Marvellous, vivid . . . breathtakingly dark' JANET ELLIS'Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years' KIRSTY LOGAN'A marvel . . . thoroughly engrossing' MARY PAULSON ELLIS

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