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The White North Has Thy Bones
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Description
Eight years ago, HMS Melpomene met disaster on her search for the missing Franklin polar expedition. A tiny handful of survivors returned home against all odds; now, one of them is to be hanged for the murder of his wife and brother, a crime he claims no memory of committing.
Among the spectators is ambitious London newsman, Harry Lambert, obsessed by the Melpomene story and the question of what could drive a hero of the Arctic to such an end.
His search for answers takes him to the door of Sidney Blakely, the survivors' charismatic leader turned celebrated Spiritualist medium – a power granted to him, he says, in the thin-veiled North. Living with him is Lieutenant Taylor who claims a darker 'gift': to be a vessel for possession by spirits of the dead. Harry doesn't believe a word of it. But as the true, bloody story behind Melpomene's end unfolds, he begins to wonder.
Blakely's revelations of desperate mutiny and a hierarchy out of its depth are shocking enough. But between these lines are whispers of unquiet ghosts, and more than ordinarily savage beasts. In the gaps between what is said and unsaid, what can be believed is as shifting and unstable as the ice itself.
Harry knows what Melpomene's crew left in the Arctic. But what did they bring back?
Product details
| Published | 02 Mar 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 464 |
| ISBN | 9781526697530 |
| Imprint | Raven Books |
| Illustrations | b/w map (double-page spread) |
| Dimensions | 234 x 153 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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I love it. It's so clever. It's true Gothic: twisty, unreliable, and full of forbidden joys . . . the story lives in the foggy, haunted space between real life and what could have acceptably been published in the time period. It feels like a brilliantly queer, brilliantly playful successor to The Terror -- I can't wait for Dorian's next book
Natasha Pulley, author of Sunday Times bestselling The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
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The Arctic horror of my dreams - one of those books that turns out to be exactly what you didn't know you were waiting for. It's a fantastically atmospheric and genuinely brutal survival story that brilliantly captures the grime and glamour of 19th-century London and the gruelling beauty of the Arctic. It's a mystery box packed with unfolding revelations that make you want to flip back to the beginning and reread it all in a new light. It's an excoriating takedown of the arrogance and exploitation that shaped the history of Polar exploration. It's a truly haunting, chilling and original ghost story. And it's a book about terrible men who kiss and eat each other. It keeps you guessing all the way through, if by "guessing" you mean "reading late into the night gripped with terror." This is my new obsession.
Hester Steel, author of The Faceless Thing We Adore
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A dark and haunting reflection on fear and love, and the lengths we can go in service to them both. A book that will press like pack ice on reader's hearts, a glittering frost that will stay with them long after they've closed its frozen pages
Sam K Horton, author of Gorse

























