Evil is most assuredly afoot-and Britain's fate rests in the hands of an alluring renegade . . . and a librarian. These are dark days indeed in Victoria's England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences-the Crown's clandestine organization whose bailiwick is the strange and unsettling-will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and exceedingly lovely Eliza D. Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness for dynamite, refuses to let the matter rest . . . and she's prepared to drag her timorous new partner, Wellington Books, along with her into the perilous fray. For a malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows, intent upon the enslavement of all Britons. And Books and Braun-he with his encyclopedic brain and she with her remarkable devices-must get to the twisted roots of a most nefarious plot . . . or see England fall to the Phoenix!