Iremonger Trilogy

Young Clod Iremonger and his eccentric family, the "kings of mildew, moguls of mold," made their fortune from this collected detritus. The Iremongers are an odd old family, each the owner of the birth object they must keep with them at all times. Clod is perhaps the oddest of all-his gift and his curse is that he can hear all of the objects of Heap House whispering. Yes, a storm is brewing over Heap House and the house's many objects are showing strange signs of life. Clod is on the cusp of being "trousered" and married off (unhappily) to his cousin Pinalippy when he meets the plucky orphan servant Lucy Pennant, with whose help he begins to uncover the dark secrets of his family's empire. The first installment of the Iremonger Trilogy, Heap House introduces readers to a gloriously imagined dark world whose inhabitants come alive on the page-and in Edward Carey's fantastical illustrations. Heap House is a book that will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl and Mervyn Peake, young and old alike. Mystery, romance, and the perils of the Heaps await!

At the Iremonger family offices in the aptly named borough of Foulsham, London's great repository of filth, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger has found a way to make objects assume the shapes of people, and how to turn people into objects. Clod, whom he sees as a threat, has been turned into a gold coin and is being passed as currency from hand-to-hand through the town. Meanwhile, Lucy Pennant has been discarded as a clay button, abandoned in the depths of the Heaps. Will they be found and returned to human form? Enter Binadit and Rippit... Meanwhile Umbitt builds an army of animated objects to retrieve the missing gold coin. All around the city, thing-ordinary things-are twitching into life, and the reader is held in breathless suspense as questions of life and death, value and disposability, rumble through this dark and mesmerizing world.

The Iremonger family is at large in London, the ruins of the town of Foulsham left burning behind them. They need a new home and they intend to find one. Londoners are beginning to notice bizarre happenings-loved ones disappearing, strange objects appearing and a creeping darkness that seems to swallow up the daylight. The Police have summoned help, but is their cure more deadly than the feared Iremongers? What role will Clod play: returning son or rebel? Heartbroken child or hero? And where are all the rats coming from? The interlocking fates of the odd and marvelous Iremongers are now to be unraveled and disclosed in the thrilling conclusion to the Iremonger trilogy. Will servant girl Lucy Pennant and young Clod Iremonger be reunited? Will the Heaps, their ramshackle ancestral home, continue to stand? Will their birth objects, discarded items-a door knob, a bath tub plug, a match box, what-have-you- given to them at birth with lives and histories of their own, continue to exert their uncanny pull? All will be revealed about Clod and his dark world in Lungdon.