Deep Dark

About this book

Children are disappearing from the streets of London. Mostly they are poor, some of them orphans, but none of them are seen as important enough for anyone in authority to take it seriously.  

Cassia Thorne, a ballad-seller who spends her days working and her nights in a debtors’ prison with her father, is outraged that no one seems to care. 

Her friend Theo, a young pickpocket, says that a ghostly lady is snatching the children, but there are rumours of a hungry beast that lives beneath the streets in long-forgotten rivers.  

Both seem unlikely explanations but, when a friend goes missing, Cassia is determined to get to the bottom of things, find the lost children, and rescue them before it’s too late. 

Set in Victorian London, the poverty and social inequality of the era are brilliantly depicted through the eyes of three children with different backgrounds and circumstances. A fantastical, ancient myth adds tension, mystery and jeopardy to Cassia’s exploits, resulting in an engrossing historical thriller.  

With complex vocabulary, this is a book for confident readers who enjoy a touch of the supernatural mixed in with the grim reality of life in the 19th century.