The spellbinding new novel from the bestselling author of The Girl of Ink & Stars, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. In an Italian city ravaged by plague, Sofia's mother carves beautiful mementoes from the bones of loved ones. But one day, she doesn't return home. Did her work lead her into danger? Sofia and her little brother Ermin are sent to the convent orphanage but soon escape, led by an enigmatic new friend and their pet crow, Corvith. Together they cross the city underground, following clues in bones up to the towers of Siena, where - circled by magpies - the children find the terrible truth ...

Siena is a city plagued by sickness. But outside its walls is the happy home of Sofia, her little brother Ermin, and their mother who crafts charms from skeletons. When Mama is arrested and the children are taken to the city’s hateful orphanage, Sofia decides to find out the truth of what is happening...

This groundbreaking work of both theoretical and experiential thought by two leading ecological philosophers and animal liberation scientists ventures into a new frontier of applied ethical anthrozoological studies. Through lean and elegant text, readers will learn that human interconnections with other species and ecosystems are severely endangered precisely because we lack - by our evolutionary self-confidence - the very coherence that is everywhere around us abundantly demonstrated. What our species has deemed to be superior is, according to Tobias and Morrison, the cumulative result of a tragically tenuous argument predicated on the brink of our species’ self-destruction, giving rise to a most unique proposition: We either recognize the miracle of other sentient intelligence, sophistication, and genius, or risk enshrining the shortest lived epitaph of any known vertebrate in earth’s 4.1 billion years of life. Tobias and Morrison draw on 45 years of research in fields ranging from ecological anthropology, animal protection and comparative ethics to literature and spirituality - and beyond. They deploy research in animal and plant behavior, biocultural heritage contexts from every continent and they bring to bear a deeply metaphysical array of perspectives that set this book apart from any other. The book departs from most work in such fields as animal rights, ecological aesthetics, comparative ethology or traditional animal and plant behaviorist work, and yet it speaks to readers with an interest in those fields. A deeply provocative book of philosophical premises and hypotheses from two of the world’s most influential ecological philosophers, this text is likely to stir uneasiness and debate for many decades to come.

Twenty years ago a terrible murder has happened. Paul Stilling, a junior partner in a firm of Birmingham jewelers, was murdered was the Pelican Hotel, Tewkesbury. He was found dead in his bed, stabbed to the heart. In the possession of Ambrose Murray, who was stopping that night in the same hotel, was found a bracelet which had belonged to Stilling and Murray was arrested and found guilty. After twenty years of imprisonment Murray has escaped and he is out determined to clear his name.