Richard A. Kirk

THE LOST MACHINE (Lumsden Moss Series) In a wasteland ravaged by plague, Lumsden Moss steps out of a decaying prison. Armed with a satchel of yellowed notebooks containing the fragile memories of five murdered children, he is determined to track down and confront their killer. Lumsden, accompanied by a stranger, begins a long journey to the vast City of Steps where he is forced to confront the horrors of the past.

NECESSARY MONSTERS (Lumsden Moss Series) Lumsden Moss is an escaped thief and an unrepentant bibliophile with a long-suffering desire to foist some karmic retribution on those who have wronged him, but when the opportunity to steal a rare book from the man who sentenced him to prison puts him on the wrong side of the wrong people, Moss finds himself on the run. When Moss falls in with Imogen, a nimble-fingered thief, he starts to realize how much of his unsavory past is indelibly tied to a frightening witch-child, her nightmarish pet monster, and the secrets of the dark heart that still lurks on Nightjar Island.

MAGPIE’S LADDER (short stories) A researcher’s curiosity draws her to the dream realm of the Darkling Lands. Condemned by his own crime, an engrosser plumbs the labyrinthine depths of his firm’s building to find that he is not alone. A young woman opens a sealed house atop a crumbling bridge. A young academic moves into the house of a dead professor and finds himself trapped in a dark fairytale. These are five stores of yearning, curiosity and darkness. They explore the fragile and dangerous correspondence between people and monsters.

TAILOR OF ECHOES Dark magic is transforming the ancient City of Steps. To save the city he loves, Adrian Peak, visionary architect, bargains with the Curators, last survivors of an occult secret society. The Curators task Adrian with finding a lost document called the Oneiric Chart in a vast sealed library. When Adrian opens the door to another city in an eerily familiar world, he must rescue Cirrah, an imprisoned magical spirit. The Curator’s servant, renowned artist, Lannikin Flower has a murderous interest in Adrian failing at his task; without Cirrah, he is nothing.