The Bone Magician

(6 Audio CDs/6.75 Hours). Pin Carpue is on his own in the world. His mother is dead and his father is missing after being labeled a suspect in a rash of murders. Pin finds a job working for the local undertaker as a body watcher, making sure people are really dead before they’re buried. The body he’s supposed to be watching tonight is currently surrounded by three people engaged in a most unusual ceremony. An old man, a bone magician, and his young female assistant are waking a woman so her grieving fiancé can have one last goodbye with her. Pin can’t believe it will work, but then the dead woman sits up and speaks. Pin is determined to discover how the magic works. He cannot believe they are raising the dead. He cannot believe his father is a murderer. Then Pin himself nearly becomes the killer’s next victim. As this mysterious tale unfolds with delicious creepiness, Pin will learn more about the bone magician, the girl Juno, and a hideous creature called the Gluttonous Beast that is kept in a local tavern where people pay for a glimpse of it. Author of the critically acclaimed Black Book of Secrets, F.E. Higgins returns to the same dark, Dickensian world for this companion novel. Narrator James Daniel Wilson’s mesmerizing performance brilliantly conveys the macabre atmosphere so richly drawn by Higgins. “Higgins is a mastermind at creating a creepy world where children still maintain some sense of hope.”—VOYA “The cast of unusual characters and their interrelated stories carry readers along swiftly to an ending that begs for a sequel. Budding fans of Poe or Dickens will be entranced by this atmospheric novel.”—School Library Journal “… there is still no end of picaresque charms, creepy turns, and beguiling cast members…”—Booklist