Bad is most assuredly afoot-and Britain’s fate rests in the hands of an alluring renegade . and a librarian.

They are dark times indeed in Victoria’s England. Londoners are vanishing, after that reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences-the Crown’s clandestine business whose bailiwick may be the strange and unsettling-will not really allow its realtors to research. Fearless and exceedingly wonderful Eliza D. Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness for dynamite, won’t allow matter rest . . . and she’s ready to move her timorous brand-new partner, Wellington Books, along with her in to the perilous fray.

For any malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows, objective upon the enslavement of most Britons. And Books and Braun-he along with his encyclopedic mind and she with her impressive devices-must reach the twisted origins of a most nefarious story . . . or see England fall towards the Phoenix!