LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 'Chop off my head and hawk it to the highest bidder. I'm the Anatomist's Dream, did you know? That's what they call me.' ...In a small salt-mining town, Philbert is born with a 'taupe', a disfiguring inflammation of the skull. Abandoned by his parents and with only a pet pig for company, he eventually finds refuge in a traveling carnival, Maulwerf's Fair of Wonders, as it makes its annual migration across Germany bringing entertainment to a people beset by famine, repression and revolutionary ferment. Philbert finds a caring family in Herman the Fish Man, Lita the Dancing Dwarf, Frau Fettleheim the Fattest Woman in the World, and an assortment of 'freak show' artists, magicians and entertainers. But when Philbert meets Kwert Tospirologist and Teller of Signs he is persuaded to undergo examination by the renowned physician and craniometrist Dr Ullendorf, both Kwert and Philbert embark on an altogether darker and more perilous journey that will have far-reaching consequences for a whole nation.

Lukitt Bachman is waiting in his Lanterne de Mortes, a Tower of the Dead, in the middle of a cemetery. He's had a complicated life: son of a Herrnhuter Brother thrown out of his sect; help-meet to a pastor; sailor; fisherman; boar-hunter; and student and lecturer, exploring the varied histories of the Knights Teutonic and the bone-chapels their descendants left behind them. He has become an assassin and a murderer, learned the terrible highs and lows of friendships made and lost, and is awaiting now his last remaining friend to set him free so he can put right past wrongs. As Lukitt is let loose on a world gone mad, can this avenging angel finally find solace for his soul?

Lucca, City State for hundreds of years, keeper of secrets and relics, possessor of the Holy Face of Christ, has Napoleon's army at its gates, the emperor having declared himself King of All Italy. A continent away in Bexleyheath, Mabel Flinchurst gazes down from her window upon the Advent Fair. With all the hustle and bustle she doesn't see the pilgrim walk into the church of St Anthony's across the square, and slit his own throat. But Lucca and this suicide are strands from the same rope, a rope that is being wound unseen about Mabel, ready to rip her from her cosy world. When Mabel's friend, Toby, is kidnapped she enlists the help of compulsive list-maker and missing-persons finder, Whilbert Stroop. Together they are drawn into a mystery that began many centuries ago, and soon they find themselves losing a race against time and treachery, as an unknown enemy, and murder, begin to snap at their heels...

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016"Chop off my head and hawk it to the highest bidder. I'm the Anatomist's Dream, did you know? That's what they call me." In a small salt-mining town, Philbert is born with a 'taupe', a disfiguring inflammation of the skull. Abandoned by his parents and with only a pet pig for company, he eventually finds refuge in a traveling carnival, Maulwerf's Fair of Wonders, as it makes its annual migration across Germany bringing entertainment to a people beset by famine, repression and revolutionary ferment. Philbert finds a caring family in Herman the Fish Man, Lita the Dancing Dwarf, Frau Fettleheim the Fattest Woman in the World, and an assortment of 'freak show' artists, magicians and entertainers. But when Philbert meets Kwert Tospirologist and Teller of Signs he is persuaded to undergo examination by the renowned physician and craniometrist Dr Ullendorf, both Kwert and Philbert embark on an altogether darker and more perilous journey that will have far-reaching consequences for a whole nation.

Astonishment Hall, a country estate in the Pennines full of extraordinary exhibitions, is truly a place of wonder. But when a valuable exhibit is stolen, it is only the first in a series of unpleasant and seemingly unconnected events. A bell tower is burnt to the ground, trapping a young boy inside, an outbreak of thefts plagues the valley, and a man is violently murdered and left to the crows and the snow. When his own investigations come to a dead end, the owner of Astonishment Hall sends to London for help. And so Whilbert Stroop journeys north to find the answers to both his own search for a missing glass-worker, and the perplexing events at Astonishment Hall. Before long, Stroop finds himself embroiled in one man's terrifying and warped desire for vengeance against ancient wrongs, and another man's fight for survival.

A stunning new crime novel from this award-winning writer The Island of Thanet, 1808. One man is pushed into a kiln of molten metal beneath the looming shadow of the Shot Tower, and another is dug up from the sandy bay beyond. Who they were, and why they died so strangely, is no ordinary mystery, and Missing Persons Finder Whilbert Stroop has a hard time finding answers. On arrival in this marshy, coastal corner of Kent, on the very edge of England, Stroop tries to piece together the puzzle of these deaths, and the significance of the objects each man died trying to protect. It is a conspiracy that began ten years before on the battlefields of Europe, and one that will claim more lives before it is done.

An enthralling mystery of dangerous secrets, desperate men and macabre murder April 1808: A storm sweeps across the islands of the Baltic Sea, destroying the village of Lower Slaughter as it goes. Into this ruined land comes missing-persons finder Whilbert Stroop, on the trail of a lost miniature library and its protector. Almost crossing his path is Griselda Liit, a refugee from Lower Slaughter, carrying her father's secrets back to the island of her birth. Behind Griselda, in the shadows, a strange figure follows for a very different reason. Stroop's investigation will lead him from the flooded valley to sinister printworks, and to the strange island archipelago of Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea. Once there, he must unravel the increasingly tangled strands of past and present that surround the islands, and delve into a mysterious world of ancient Brotherhoods, insurrection, piracy, and death.

Strontian, a village on Ardnamurchan Peninsula, is inhabited by mining folk and crofters, eking out a living from the unforgiving land and turning a blind eye to the smugglers who plague the coast. A bag of bones is pulled out of the water; the assistant to Gustav Wengler, eccentric owner of the lead mines, is brutally murdered; what is the connection? And what do either have to do with the sundial in Ockle churchyard and the collection of monuments on Wengler's island known locally as the White Cathedral? Sholto McKay and Brogar Finn of the Pan-European Mining Company - in pursuit of a potentially valuable mineral from the Strontian mines - begin their own investigations, unaware their discoveries will tear more than one life apart.