"A half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository" - Joris-Karl Huysmans.
Like many artists & intellectuals of the day, Huysmans really didn't hold back in his criticism of the Eiffel Tower.
A Victorian tale of ciphers, talking boards and seances, of magicians and mediums, and a journey filled with regret, guilt, deception, friendship and hope.
When fourteen-year old Kate discovers a letter, written mostly in cipher, within the workings of her late mother's hand-carved music box, she determines to find out what it means, but the few words she can read warn her to 'trust nobody'.
After quickly learning these words are no idle threat, she soon finds herself dragged into a dangerous but illuminating journey through a late 19th Century London, where science and rationalism struggles for supremacy with mysticism and spiritualism.
She is helped in her quest by 'The Ghost Club', a group of young boys who help mediums create the illusion of ghosts for their seances in order to make it easier for John Neville Maskelyne of 'England's Home of Mystery' to expose them.
The strange discovery of the cipher leads Kate from talking boards and seances to the magicians of the Egyptian Hall along the way meeting some of the most colourful characters of the late Victorian occult revival in a story of regret, guilt, deception, friendship and hope.
