Agent: Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Associates (U.K.). : The Bedlam Stacks: 9781620409695: Pulley, Natasha: Books Books Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy Buy new: 12.99 List Price: 18.00 Details Save: 5.01 (28) Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime & FREE Returns FREE delivery Thursday, July 28 if you spend 25 on items shipped by Amazon Or fastest delivery Tuesday, July 26. Pulley makes the fantastic feel plausible and burnishes her reputation as a gifted storyteller. In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg and something is wrong a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness. On arrival in Peru, Merrick encounters more oddities, including animated statues that give benedictions and a border made of salt and bone that is fatal to cross, which cause him to feel that he has entered “an imaginary place where the river was a dragon and somewhere in the forest was something stranger than elves.” His quest to both stay alive and to obtain the precious cinchona plants leads to more marvels-and to tragedy.

To avoid either of the unpleasant choices that Charles offers out of fear for Merrick’s sanity (taking work at a parsonage where he’d no longer see the statue, or being confined with their mother), Merrick joins the treacherous expedition, whose ostensible purpose is to retrieve cuttings from the rare trees that are the only source for quinine, needed to alleviate a malaria epidemic in India that has adversely affected the company’s business. Because Merrick insists that a heavy statue overlooking his father’s grave has mysteriously moved, Merrick’s half-brother, Charles, worries that he’s afflicted with the mental illness that landed their mother in an asylum. On account of a leg injury, botanical expert Merrick Tremayne, the hero of this witty, entrancing novel set in the 19th century from Pulley ( The Watchmaker of Filigree Street), initially declines to travel from England to Peru for the East India Company.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley