A VERY UNUSUAL PURSUIT

The first in a trilogy set in Victorian era London.

Mysterious monsters have been living in the caves and wells and cess-pits of Great Britain for thousands of years. Known variously as bogles, knuckers, cludachs and worricows, they all have one thing in common – their insatiable appetite for small children. That's why Alfred Bunce, master bogler, must have young apprentices to help him. Without a child at his side, he can't lure the bogles from their lairs and kill them.

Unfortunately, bogling doesn't pay too well – largely because only common folk believe in bogles. So Alfred's apprentices must subsist in a slummy part of Victorian London, trudging from one spot to the next as they exterminate sewer-bogles, privy-bogles, chimney-bogles, and the bogles that lurk in cellars and coal-holes. The Monsters of London trilogy tells the story of ten-year-old Birdie McAdam and her two fellow apprentices, Jem Barbary and Ned Roach. In The Bogler's Girl, Alfred and Birdie find themselves locked in a life-and-death struggle with an evil doctor who fancies himself as a warlock, and who's been feeding young pickpockets to a bogle in the hope of taming it.

In The Bogler's Boy, Alfred and Jem are called in to clean up a plague of bogles in the area around Newgate Prison – and in the process fall foul of Jem's old enemy, Sarah Pickles, who once controlled the gang of pickpockets that Jem ran with. In The Bogler's Guild, Ned takes up where Birdie and Jem left off, as Birdie pursues a pantomime career and Jem finds work as a tumbler. By now, London's bogle problem is so great that the city's Sewers Office has formed a secret committee to deal with it. But as naturalists and engineers tackle the bogle infestation scientifically, Ned begins to realise that the age of the traditional bogler is drawing to an end.

This action-packed historical fantasy series explores subjects such as child labour, class differences, and the slow transformation of Victorian England as magic and folklore gave way to science and technology. It also introduces a host of colourful and memorable characters. Playing out against a backdrop of Thames mudflats, bustling meat markets, crypts, guildhalls, workhouses and hackney-filled streets, it's a vivid and exciting read for 8-to-12-year-olds, full of monsters and mayhem!